


Dreams of an Absolution

by 999blackflowers



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Dimension Travel, Established Relationship, Luke chillin with another version of himself, M/M, Musical integration, Not Canon Compliant, Plot, There are more characters but they are a surprise!, Trigger warnings are within, personal continuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 35,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21778483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/999blackflowers/pseuds/999blackflowers
Summary: [Completed Fanfiction]Professor Layton and Luke Triton have made a life for themselves, managing to hide their relationship over the past 12 years successfully. Although things are not perfect, they are happy and that is what matters. Things are just peachy until the professor witnesses a stabbing in an alleyway and a mysterious visitor turns up on their doormat. Their skills will be needed for a case unlike any of them have seen before, for someone incredibly familiar...
Relationships: Hershel Layton/Luke Triton, Luke Triton & Luke Triton
Comments: 32
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that trigger warnings for this fanfiction will be done chapter by chapter. This fanfiction is set up so you may skip a chapter and be able to read the notes at the beginning of the next chapter so you can recap or learn what happened so you aren't missing anything. 
> 
> This fanfiction includes musical integration with SoundCloud which will allow you to read along with music from the games, as well as a couple of arrangements I made myself. It is recommended you read on PC with headphones on so you may use the embeds to listen.
> 
> This takes place in a personal continuity and is not canon compliant. This fanfiction assumes that Katrielle was not adopted and Luke returned to London at age 19. This fanfiction also assumes Luke and the professor’s relationship began shortly after the events of Spectre’s Call.
> 
> This is a work of fiction. The characters, groups and events portrayed within are in no way meant to resemble those of the real world. I do not condone this kind of relationship in real life. 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:  
> food, horror films

Luke, age 23, was flicking through a takeout menu. His eyes went over the various dishes, Hershel standing behind him. It was a fine Thursday evening. Winter had arrived but it was cozy inside and the two had decided it was a good night to spend some time together.

“Do you think we’ll ever find a place that actually does, you know. Restaurant quality food?” Luke murmured to Hershel behind him as he eyed the broken English text. “Can you imagine? Restaurant quality vegetarian takeout? Sounds perfect.”

Hershel smiled and shook his head. “There’s that Thai place. You like the tom kha soup from there, don’t you?” 

“Well, yes, but sometimes you don’t feel like spicy soup, you know?” Luke exhaled, slumping over the kitchen counter. “I want to be able to eat something on date night that isn’t spicy - and that’s actually _quality._ ”

“Luke, darling, you’d have to cook then.” Hershel teased.

“Yes, but it’s not the same.” Luke rolled his eyes. “Let’s just order from here and.. Hope it’s passable?”

“This might be the place we’ve been looking for.” Hershel nodded, grabbing the phone and beginning to dial the number on the menu. It was one of those new fancy phones where you actually pressed the buttons rather than doing any strange rotary motion. Much easier.

“Do you want to pick it up?” Luke asked, hoping to get an answer before the person on the other end of the phone picked up.

“I’ll pick it up.” Hershel nodded, until he began speaking in his ‘on-the-telephone’ voice, staring down at the menu to place an order. 

Luke went to the small dining table to pick up the breakfast dishes which they’d neglected to do earlier. He carried them to the sink and just grabbed some silverware from a drawer to set out on the table. He quietly wondered how it would be if they could go out together to a restaurant like _normal people._

You know, being able to hold hands in public without being beaten up. Their age gap was one thing but the fact they could be assaulted or beaten up for doing something like _holding hands_ in the street made Hershel incredibly paranoid about going out anywhere.

Luke had suggested in the past that they could go out discreetly. Pretend they were coworkers on a business dinner. Perhaps, sure, but what’s a date if you can’t so much as take your partner’s hand or kissing their cheek? Not much of a date. They’d tried it once at a Thai restaurant, anyway, the food was delicious but the fact they could barely flirt with each other made it almost insufferable.

So here they were, Date Night getting takeout. The usual.

Not the worst thing ever. Sometimes the quiet apartment had a romantic atmosphere if lit with candles and the like. Plus they didn’t have to shout over each other like in a restaurant. And Luke had gotten a VHS down from the local video rental to watch. It was a horror movie, but Hershel didn’t need to know that. Plus he could take the opportunity to comfort and hug him if he got scared. _The master plan._

Luke began to cackle to himself, catching a concerned glance from Hershel as whoever was on the other end of the phone relayed their order back to confirm.

“Alright, that’s all correct. Thank you.” Hershel spoke before putting the phone back down on the receiver, ending the call.

“Should I bother with candles?” Luke asked as he carefully pushed a fork into position. “We can just turn the lights down. I’m not bothered finding the candles and lighting all of them…”

“Let’s not worry about them, then.” Hershel gave a nod, going to grab his coat from the coathanger, checking his watch. “I’ll be back in… 14 minutes, I’d estimate.”

Luke stood in the now empty apartment, the table set and the lights turned down low. Now he had nothing to do for those 14 minutes - and yes, he knew it would be 14 minutes. Hershel had a natural knack for calculating time from his endless puzzle solving.

He decided to fetch a book he’d been reading recently, although his eyes caught on a little framed photo of Flora on the bookshelf. The photo was rather old, back when Hershel had first adopted her, and his mind filled with thoughts.

“Wonder how she’s doing.” Luke murmured to himself as he took a book from their ‘library book don’t forget to return’ shelf. 

Flora had never lived with them - she’d been sent to a boarding school when the professor had adopted her. It was clear she wanted some kind of fatherly attention, but one Hershel felt he couldn’t give without it turning inappropriate. He didn’t trust himself.

Luke pondered a letter he’d sent a couple of months ago. He’d gotten a response from her - she’d been talking about a patient she’d been taking care of. Flora had pursued a degree in medicine and was currently working in a hospital in Manchester, so contact was obviously slow. 

Perhaps he could send a letter talking about the cute animals he dealt with in his work? Luke was a veterinarian and obviously excelled at his work. Diagnosis was easy when you could just sit down and ask the little kitten what was wrong with her paw rather than running a hundred tests. He had a bit of medical knowledge from that and perhaps Flora might want to hear about it? Yeah, that’s what he should write his next letter about!

Mm. Upon second thought, he needed to send a letter back to one of his friends from New York. He’d got him into karate and he was thankful for that. 

Luke continued to ponder until his eyes caught on the clock and he realized it had been just about 13 minutes and 32 seconds since Hershel had left. _Soon._

He got up and went to sit at the table, counting the seconds. He tapped his fingers on the table, having the lights turned down. 42… 43… 44… 45… Hershel was always _right_ on time to the point of absurdity. 50… 51… 52…

The door opened.

“Aha!” Luke cackled. “Eight seconds too early!” He declared as the professor stepped inside, holding a paper bag. 

“Did you count the minutes and seconds again?” Hershel chuckled in disbelief.

“You’re always spot on with your timing, is the thing.” Luke leaned over the table as Hershel grabbed the two plastic containers containing what they’d ordered. “It’s scary.”

“I was eight seconds too early, wasn’t I?” Hershel asked as he took his seat.

“Still close enough. I don’t know anyone else who can… time themselves that well down to the minute.” Luke took the plastic container. It contained some fried rice mixed with peas, bean sprouts. 

“I suppose you’re right.” Hershel smiled as he sat down with his own meal, opening it. “The moment of truth.”

Luke dug a fork in, getting a small amount of rice to put in his mouth. Hmm.

“The verdict?” Hershel tapped his fork against the container, raising an eyebrow.

“Mm… It’s good.” Luke spoke, pondering for a second. “Not restaurant quality, but not bad. It’s tasty. Maybe a bit salty.”

“Ah, shame.” Hershel began to eat. “If it’s too salty-”

“I’ll eat anything, Hershel. You know that.” Luke gave a little laugh.

“Oh, I worry about that sometimes.” 

—

“I’m not quite sure this isn’t a horror movie, Luke.” Hershel commented, resting his head on Luke’s shoulder as they sat on the couch. Their small Cathode ray tube TV was displaying the moving images of the film they’d rented. 

“It might be.” Luke smirked to himself, struggling to contain a giggle. The two had a blanket on their laps, and he was resting his hand on Hershel’s thigh. “You’ll have to see.”

“I’m not letting you pick out the movie next time.” Hershel assured him as he nuzzled his face into the crook of Luke’s neck, until the speakers of the TV let out a horrible shrill scream. “I knew it. Is this a slasher?”

“Perhaps the film titled ‘Microwave Massacre’ is a nice romcom, let’s see.” Luke squeezed the man’s thigh.

“Good lord, Luke.” Hershel’s eyes went to the TV and witnessed someone being beaten to death with a pepper grinder, a cringe coming to his face.

“Yes, but now you’ll be afraid and you’ll want me to hold you tight, won’t you?” Luke whispered softly by his ear.

“You’re an evil genius in the making.” Hershel commented, trying to somehow shuffle closer to Luke. They were pressed tightly together already. Nevermind that, he could just pull the blanket up to his shoulder and they’d be snuggled together under the blanket. He would put up with a gory horror movie for Luke’s sake, he tended to like that kind of thing.

Luke blinked as the film progressed to show a corpse being microwaved, looking over to Hershel who did kind of look disgusted but he was putting up with it.

“I’m glad we made it.” Luke whispered softly, rubbing the man’s hand. “I’m glad we can sit and watch bad movies together and not worry about things.”

“I love you too.” Hershel understood the message, trying to not focus on the movie but took a moment to focus on Luke’s eyes. Dark beautiful pools. “Happily ever after is a real thing, I suppose.”

“Happily ever after.” Luke repeated, planting a kiss on his forehead.

Surely things would stay peaceful and happy. The two went to bed that night perfectly happy and in love as ever - fully unaware of the events that would be unfolding in just under 24 hours from then.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous Chapter: Luke and Hershel enjoyed a lovely night at home eating takeout and watching a movie together. Just a nice warm evening with the two of them.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: knives, assault

Hershel placed some documents into his briefcase. Night had fallen and he had just finished up with the first stack of midterms. Marking was a tiring process and his office was messier than usual, papers strewn everywhere, several empty teacups, books lying open all over the floor… He closed the briefcase and looked over the organized chaos of his office, remembering his cleaner was coming in at about midday tomorrow. 

Well then, he would just have to make a stab at cleaning tomorrow. Hopefully no one would try to turn in anything early… He liked to prioritize marking over everything else.

Hershel took his umbrella from the rack and heard the drumming thunder ripping through the air. He could hear rain tap tap tapping on the roof of the university. Although the university was mostly deserted, he could hear the squeak of wet shoes on the floor. The Dean, perhaps. He went down the stairs, being careful not to slip, remembering his parking space had been taken by some hack - but a gentleman would never complain about someone stealing his parking space! So he was parked a couple of blocks away. And now it was raining.

He briefly wished he had some kind of hat. He’d decided to stop wearing his top hat a couple of years back for a couple reasons, but a new one wouldn’t be terrible. Perhaps a fedora? Those were smart and trendy looking. 

Hershel went to the door, struggling to push it open against the wind. The wind eased for a moment, causing him to stumble and step into a puddle on the stairs. That was pleasant.

He sighed and unfolded his umbrella, pointing it towards the wind - he didn’t want it pushed upwards or anything. What dreadful weather…

And thus Hershel strolled through the rain, wishing the large coat he was wearing today was rainproof. Some of his jackets were! But not this one. The street lamps were lit but the rain bucketing down made it difficult to see that far, although Hershel knew where he was going. He just had to go through an alleyway--

As he stepped into the alleyway, he suddenly stopped at the entrance. There was the silhouette of a man. He was up against a wall, holding his head. Hershel couldn’t make out any features, but he seemed to be out of breath. His chest was heaving. 

He was about to step back and find another way, deciding this was something he wouldn’t get involved in until a pained yell ripped through the air.

His head whipped around, seeing the man had slid to the ground, There was something very clearly embedded in his neck, and a taller silhouette strolling towards him. Once again, featureless. Hershel felt sick to his stomach- still sinking in what he’d just seen. He wanted to run but he realized his footsteps would be heard, and this man likely didn’t want to leave any witnesses.

Hershel’s mind tried to go through several options. He could run and leave this victim to die, go home and pretend it hadn’t happened. He could step in and risk his own life, but… that  _ would  _ be the right thing to do in this situation. Even if it meant injuring himself in the process. That was his policy. 

Well, he wasn’t going to change that policy now. He closed his umbrella, deciding he could probably deal a bit of a blow with the metal rod. And he began to approach.

The assailant was pulling the shining blade from the victim’s throat, until Hershel cleared his throat.

“Did you have a reason for assaulting this man?” Hershel spoke in the dark, finding his voice was unexpectedly croaky. Even closer, he couldn’t make out any features on the man. “Were you hoping to get your weekly adrenaline rush? There are better ways of getting it, you know.”

For a second, the assailant got up, seemingly staring Hershel down, but his expression was unreadable in the dark. Hershel felt a chill as the man paused to stare, before he suddenly bolted with the blade in hand.

...No use going after him now. He had to help this poor man. He could call the police later, and this man’s life was more important for now.

Hershel knelt, propping the umbrella open to shield the man from the rain, immediately trying to discern if he had any other wounds. He accidentally touched the hot blood pumping from the man’s neck and winced, but as he touched the skin he felt something very strange. The man was…  _ vibrating. _

“Sir? Can I have your name?”

“L...Lyall…” The man managed to groan his name, until he coughed and hacked violently - Hershel feeling some fluid hitting his cheek. Even that was vibrating...

“I’m going to get you an ambulance. There’s a police telephone box just around the corner.” Hershel tried to assure the man, attempting to sit him up and applying pressure briefly to the stab wound, adjusting the umbrella to keep him out of the rain.

He could only hope he was helping, deciding to dash off to that telephone box, thankful he always kept a couple of quarters on him. 

Once he returned, he tried to discern if there were any extra wounds. “Do you know why you were assaulted, sir?” Hershel checked the man’s wrist and decided to continue applying pressure to the stab wound.

“I--I was followed.” The man croaked. 

“Did they want something from you?”

“I don’t know.” 

Hershel’s eyes went up, hearing the siren of an ambulance and the lights now flashing in his eyes. He exhaled a sigh of relief. Hopefully the man would be fine? Regardless, tonight was a scary day. 

A couple of paramedics rushed out with a stretcher, Hershel quickly informing them of the situation and turned his head, wondering if the assailant was still around. It seems like he’d escaped… Hershel noted that he didn’t seem to take anything from the man, he just seemed like he wanted to kill him. He grabbed his umbrella and went to his car, feeling rather jittery.

Hershel opened the car door and sat down, feeling rather icky in his rain soaked jacket. He just took it off and put it in the passenger seat, exhaling. In the rear view mirror he could see a splash of blood on his cheek. He rubbed it off and turned the keys in the ignition, wondering how Luke was going at home. 

As he pulled out to start driving home, he noticed his knuckles turned white as he gripped the wheel. His blood felt cold. Hershel had seen many many things in his life, but a man stabbed right in front of him… His stomach was churning.

Poor Luke. He’d told him he would be working late but he’d spent more time than expected at work, and then suddenly he had to deal with this sudden assault in an alleyway, an unknown assailant, a stab wound… He exhaled. Luke had probably cooked up some comfort food for him for when he got home, but he was later than he’d expected...

Luke aside, Hershel’s mind wouldn’t get off the fact the he’d just saved was…  _ vibrating.  _ What on earth? He wasn’t shivering, he was  _ buzzing _ . Did he have some kind of vibrator strapped to his neck? Did he steal it from his assailant? He honestly had no idea, but...

He could smell a mystery on the horizon. Something he and Luke would probably wind up investigating somehow. Perhaps he could investigate more in the morning, for tonight he just needed to… recover from that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Hershel Layton, while travelling home, stumbles across a stabbing in an alleyway. The assailant gets away and Layton learns the name of the victim, Lyall, and finds out he is... vibrating? Hershel calls an ambulance for the man and quickly hurries home.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: parental shunning, violence, interrogation, food

A smashed teacup, several shelves of smashed artifacts, a broken violin in the kitchen, and Luke on the couch, holding his shoulder.

The first things Hershel had noticed as he stepped inside. 

Luke had a clear black eye forming for one thing. His eyes were snagged by a shattered teacup - one of his favourites! Oh dear, the shelves and his artifact collection... How did this happen?! Those were hundreds of years old! But- Luke.

"...Good evening." Luke croaked, sounding just as confused as Hershel. His voice was hoarse.

“Oh my.” Hershel could only whisper, unable to believe what he was seeing. As his eyes met Luke’s he saw the dark bruise around his eye and immediately gasped, hurrying over to take his jaw to see if he was badly hurt.

"... I'm fine- I'm fine--" Luke could see the panicked look on Hershel’s face, just trying to assure him that everything was okay, despite the fact he was clearly in agony.

“Who  _ did  _ this to you?” Hershel whispered, sadness having appeared on his face. Luke was undeniably trembling from the pain.

“He’s— down there.” Luke pointed to a figure on the ground. Hershel’s eyes went to an unconscious man on the floor he somehow hadn’t noticed.

Blond bleached hair, pink fringe. Black shirt, belted jeans, thick soled combat boots. He just lay there, face down. Hershel had never seen this man in his life.

"Do you want the full story?" Luke murmured.

\--

6:38PM, Luke arrived home. It had been a relatively quiet day at the veterinarian's office. He didn’t get to deal with any patients, he was just busy with paperwork, and he was still shaking the boredom off his mind. Hershel was working late tonight - he often did around this time of year. And you know what Luke did when dear Hershel was working late? He cooked him a good meal to enjoy when he got home. 

Luke found there was a good amount of pastry in the fridge and decided to make a good ol' mushroom and spinach pie. One of Hershel’s favourite things on a cold winter’s night.

Once Luke had the pie in the oven, he set an egg timer to 25 minutes and decided to wash some of the utensils he used. He looked up at the clock and noted the time, remembering that Hershel would be coming home late tonight. Not much later, just some of his students had turned in some midterms earlier and he liked to mark in his office. Although, Hershel had said he would be home by now… Probably some holdup at Gressenheller. He often got sidetracked if someone asked him to solve a puzzle or needed help with anything in particular.

Luke was deep in thought as he scrubbed a chopping board until he heard a knock at the door. Ah, here was Hershel now. Just a couple of minutes later than expected. He went to the door and looked through the peephole, expecting to see his love but rather seeing a rather cold looking man with bleached blond hair and a pink fringe. He wore a black boater’s hat of sorts as well. He hadn’t seen this man in his life, but opened the door a crack.

"Excuse me? Sir? Do you need something…?"

The man on the other side of the door stared wordlessly. His eyes looked familiar, but Luke couldn’t place where he’d seen them before. He opened his mouth to speak, but words didn’t come out.

"I'm sorry, sir, but are you looking for someone else's apartment?" Luke smiled awkwardly. “If you’re looking for Ms. Rayheight she lives next door, common mistake. I can show you.”

The man blinked for a moment. “N...no, I’m here to pick up an artifact for the Professor- Layton.”

"Oh, then come in!" Luke opened the door for him, letting the man shuffle inside. One of the professor’s students? Coworkers? Whatever, if he knew their address he must’ve been here to pick up said artifact. Perhaps Hershel had a sudden meeting or he needed something to mark against.

"Thank you." The man sounded genuinely thankful. Luke stepped by the coat hanger so the man could take off his trenchcoat - watching the man carefully take off the coat to hang up. He was wearing a black long sleeved shirt underneath and some belted jeans. Luke noticed he was seemingly shaking.

“It’s pretty cold and rainy tonight, isn’t it? Would you like a cup of tea to warm up?” Luke smiled faintly. A warm smile and a warm cup of tea cheered any Englishman up. Hospitality was a talent he’d developed over the years, thanks to Hershel.

“I’ll- yes, please.”

Luke went to fill the kettle with water to start brewing the tea. The man was seemingly going around the walls. He seemed to be glancing over the various artifact shelves, then went to hover by a photo on the wall. It was a photo of the time he and Hershel had gone up to Wales for a long weekend getaway. It was just a photo of them by the coastline - Luke had taken it himself with a disposable camera. It had been a nice holiday. He took a moment to reminisce until he wondered just why the visitor was lingering on it. But— it would be rude to ask.

“Could I get your name, by the way?” Luke asked as he put the kettle on the stove, turning the heat on and deciding to try and observe the man more closely. He was here for an artifact, wasn’t he?

"...Dante." The man replied, a bit hesitant, seemingly reaching a hand to the photo.

"Could I know what particular artifact you’re looking for?” Luke decided to stroll closer so he couldn’t just… touch that photo or the frame. He didn’t need to be staring at it. He was here for an  _ artifact. _ He pulled the man over to a shelf of old Roman artifacts. A couple of idols, some pottery, an old seal… “Any particular civilization? If you’re looking for Roman, there’s some up on this shelf. If you’re looking for Azran you’ll have to go into the professor’s study.”

“...Mayan.” The man replied a bit hesitant once again before he gravitated over to a photo of Luke at his graduation from Cornell University. Luke in his cap and robe with his diploma with his proud mother and father. Luke decided that’s probably a photo that the visitor could look at. He would rather not have any random stranger lingering on that holiday photo. Luke’s eyes went over to it, remembering in the photo he had an arm around Hershel’s waist. He was using his free hand to take the photo. Hershel had an arm around his shoulder. Good times, but people could draw  _ conclusions  _ from it.

“So you also graduated from Cornell.” The man commented on the photo, in a quiet mumble. Luke noticed the man going back over to the Roman shelf. No, he wanted the Mayan artifacts, right?

“...That’s the Roman shelf.” Luke mumbled to the visitor. “The Mayan shelf is this way.” He pulled the man over by the arm awkwardly to the carefully curated shelf of Mayan artifacts. Plates, ceremonial knives, statues...

"Do you talk to your dad much?” The man just asked out of nowhere, a sad tinge in his voice.

Luke felt a bitter pang in his chest. Why would- why would you just  _ ask that?  _ He hadn’t heard from his father in two years, although he had tried sending 3-4 letters. Two years ago he’d sent a letter to his father disclosing his relationship with Hershel. Hershel had thought it would be now or never and probably best he knew. Now, of course, Luke had been somewhat dishonest when he said they had gotten together just last year. Something to soften the blow. The truth was they’d been together since they’d solved the mystery in Misthallery around the spectre.

And Luke had received a letter back in the mail with a strongly worded cease contact. For both him and Hershel. The words were engraved in his mind like a permanent brand scar, and they weren’t something he wanted to remember again.

_ -I would never have expected Hershel to stoop this low- _

_ -I thought better of you and was hoping you’d find a good wife and not- _

Enough of those thoughts. He shut them up, noticing the man he’d let into the flat was now staring directly into his eyes. They were crystalline. Tears?

“...Sir.” Luke pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath, trying to silence the words of the letter from booming in his brain. “That isn’t your business. You are here to pick up a Mayan artifact. Please tell me what specific artifact you are looking for.”

“Wh…” The man paused. Luke noticed he did indeed have tears forming in his eyes but he honestly wasn’t taking anything more from him. “H...how’s your relationship with the professor?”

“Sir.” Luke narrowed his eyes, exhaling for a moment. Calm breathing. Calm breathing. No, no, now was not the time for calm breathing. This man isn’t here for an artifact. He may have come to just harass me. He didn’t even seem sure what he wanted when he was coming here. He took a deep breath. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. My personal life is none of your business-”

He was cut off by the man suddenly having grabbed Luke’s violin from its stand against the wall - holding it by the neck. His face had turned to some kind of rage.

“Put that down.” Luke reached a hand to grab the violin, only for the man to try and swat him with it. He instinctively blocked, although his mind sparked, recognizing he was in danger.

“HOW’D YOU DO IT?!” The man suddenly shouted, now wielding Luke’s poor violin like a weapon. And Luke was just getting into a defensive stance - he was a brown belt in karate - when suddenly the man just raised the violin above his head to smash the artifact shelf above him. 

Luke’s mind was blurry, words still echoing in his mind as he tried to focus and centre himself in the situation. He had learned that sometimes the best self defense was to  _ look  _ dangerous, and then most people would back off.

- _ I thought better of you- _

The words distracted him for a moment until the violin came smashing to his arms, the man beginning to shout and sob incoherently. Why was he crying?! Luke went to deliver a well placed punch as he was left vulnerable and open, only for the man to take a defensive step back, blocking using the violin.

And Luke’s fist went right through his expensive nice £870 violin. He yanked his fist back, barely thinking until the man used the close range to slam the remains right into his face, hitting his eye socket. And then threw the remains to the kitchen, giving a sob as he did so. 

He wasn’t knocked to the ground, but now the man was taking a similar stance to the one he had taken. And he tried to deliver a kick to the jaw, but somehow Luke knew it was coming and leaned back to avoid. He had an eye squeezed shut from pain, but he tried to deliver a jab to the man’s stomach - only for him to somehow lean back and dodge that as well. It occurred to Luke he needed to grab the phone and try to call 999, this man might be here to outright kill him.

“HOW’D-” As Luke tried to take a step back, he was hit with a jab to the shoulder, knocking him to the ground unexpectedly. Then a kick to the head. “YOU-” And the man’s boot on his chest, kicking down as hard as possible. “DO-” And suddenly the man had grabbed his jaw, and Luke felt electricity course through his breathless body.

...and then suddenly the man was unconscious on top of him.

...he was vibrating.

_ Everything hurt. _

\--

Hershel had carefully laid the man down on the sofa in his study, briefly feeling his pulse to just check he was alright. Hershel had basically done a full search to make sure he wasn’t concealing any weapons. No money, no ID, no nothing. Just the clothes on his back, and most curiously, a gigantic grey plastic device on his wrist with all sorts of dials and switches. Hershel had decided to take that off him to hang onto for now in case it was indeed a weapon. Luke was still trembling after that beatdown, but he’d went out of his way to get Hershel a bit of the casserole he’d cooked and was standing behind him with the plate.

“...Curious.” Hershel whispered.

“Hmm?”

Hershel stood up straight, taking a moment to ponder. “...On my way home today I witnessed an assault.” He spoke bluntly. “A man named Lyall was stabbed in the neck in the dark. I called him an ambulance, but the assailant got away…”

“You did?!” Luke lightly gasped. “Oh, dear. Tonight’s a busy night…”

“Yes, but the man that was stabbed was vibrating and buzzing.” Hershel stroked his chin, recounting the strange phenomenon. “Your assailant here is… also vibrating.”

“I noticed, but… why?” Luke held the plate of the casserole in one hand, but put a hand on his hip as he pondered. Tonight was definitely a strange night...

“You said he passed out once he touched you?” Hershel glanced over.

“When he actually touched my with his hand rather than with his boot or elbow.” Luke confirmed. Hershel took the man’s arm, lifting it up. Luke cautiously poked it only to watch the man’s arm immediately spasm. He reflexively pulled his hand away.

“These incidents must be linked.” Hershel whispered, a twinkle in his eye as he realized this may be an emerging mystery. 

“If he came to our flat specifically… Could someone be after us?” 

“I don’t think so. The man who attacked Lyall in the street saw me but fled.”

“Did he look anything like… this man?” Luke pondered. “What if they’re the same person? It was too dark to see in the alleyway, right?”

“Mm, I’m not so sure. The man I saw was a lot taller.” Hershel stroked his chin.

“Do you think we could class this as assault and get the cops involved?” Luke suggested… “We still might be in danger.”

“I’d like to question him myself before we get the police.” Hershel looked down to him. “From what you said, I don’t think he really knew what he was doing or why he came in here… But he knew this was our apartment and asked about Clark…”

Luke made a little mumble as confirmation, before going silent for a few moments. “...Are you hungry?”

“Oh, I am, actually, I almost forgot… about eating...”

Luke held out the plate of the casserole he’d made, a knife and fork on the side of the plate. He smiled a bit, although his expression was slightly dampened by his black eye. “I made casserole.”

“You did? Thank you.” A smile managed itself onto Hershel’s face.

\--

The next morning, Hershel had been up bright and early. It was a weekend but he had been too busy pondering the events of the previous night to sleep. And he wanted Luke to go test something for him. Both of them were kind of stumped about the whole ‘vibrating people’ situation, but Hershel had the idea to get a strand of their intruder’s hair tested. Just a bit of easily removable matter to test with some chemical analyser.

Luke carefully parked the Laytonmobile in Hershel’s designated parking spot, looking out the window and frowning at the gathering dark clouds. These just weren’t overcast clouds, these were rain clouds. Ugh. He quickly hopped out, slamming the door a bit too harshly and running inside.

The polished stone floors seemed to be somewhat muddied, although Luke just quickly went to a wall to figure out where the computer labs were again. Luke did come here often, Hershel tended to forget the lunch he packed for himself and Luke often took a small bit of delight in delivering it if only to make a surprise visit. He identified the computer labs on the small map and quickly went there, waving at one of Hershel’s colleagues as they passed by.

Luke entered the computer lab, finding it empty. There were about 12 IBM-PCs, one of the machines being hooked up to a chemical analyser. He decided to quickly claim it by dropping the little ziplock bag in front of it, and going to a rack of various 3 1⁄2-inch floppies containing different programs. A quick flick through the rack and he grabbed one with “chemical analyser” written on it, heading back to the computer and pulling up a desk chair. He carefully slotted the disk in and reached around the back to flip the switch to turn it on.

He leaned back in the chair and ran his hands through his hair as he waited for it to boot, listening to the grinding sounds of the internal disk and floppy drives. Once the green command line showed up, he navigated to the directory of the chemical analyser program and typed in a command to execute it, carefully opening the ziplock bag and sliding under the locks of hair.

And now he waited. Text appeared on the screen to confirm that it was analysing the chemical structure of the strands under the chemical identifier scope. Luke leaned back and stared at the strands and noticed- those too were indeed vibrating.

Luke absentmindedly twirled some of his own hair around a finger in a tight short curl until the computer made a beep to indicate it was done. It identified the deoxyribonucleic acid as well as the various proteins and keratins, although it seemed to report a few abnormalities - it appeared the various elements making up the strands seemed to all be some kind of exotic isotope of the regular element. And also it was still vibrating.

He grabbed a notepad from his jacket pocket to jot down the results - he always carried a notepad on him - and then carefully brushed the vibrating strands of hair back into the ziplock bag. 

Seeing as he was here and he had some time to spare, he plucked a strand of his own hair and slid it under the scope, firing up the program again out of curiosity.

\--

Hershel had been sitting in his study, stirring some tea absentmindedly. The intruder had not awoken and he wanted to stay nearby for when he did. Until then, he had a book on how to restore broken artifacts. He had done it several times in his life but he was hoping that he could restore the artifacts back to their original condition before the man had taken a violin to them. He knew he probably couldn’t restore Luke’s violin, but it was worth a shot to fix those artifacts. He already did a lot of that in his line of work anyway.

If there was something he’d noticed, this intruder had a remarkably similar facial structure to Luke’s. Right down to… each detail. His eyes were closed, so he couldn’t exactly see his eye colour, but the resemblance was unsettling. He pondered over this as he sat his tea down, noticing movement from the couch.

Hershel’s eyes went to the man, who had slowly sat up, rubbing his head and whining. He made a small pained noise, before he opened his grey eyes - meeting the eyes of Professor Hershel Layton.

“Good morning.” Hershel spoke flatly as he put his book down as to focus on the conversation, grabbing the lightly steaming cup of tea from his desk. A couple of empty teacups rested there as well, but he ignored them.

“I’m s-so sorry.” The man shuffled back against the couch, but he didn’t seem to make a break for it. Layton identified his accent as some weird mix between Cockney and Boston - unique and quite similar to Luke’s. His voice had a strange smoker hoarse tinge to it, though. 

“Could I get your name?” Hershel sipped his tea after asking, attempting to maintain eye contact. When asking questions he tended to try and maintain an apathetic detached outlook, never pushing too hard, but today he was not up for that, especially considering this man had smashed several priceless artifacts and attacked his partner.

“D...Dante Inferno.” The man hesitated before giving his answer. 

“I don’t think that’s your legal name. It’s a nice pseudonym, but I would like your legal name.” Hershel applied a bit of pressure.

The man didn’t say a word, almost struck with silence. Perhaps he didn’t want to give up his name.

“Dante Inferno is a curious pseudonym, I must remark.” Hershel spoke softly. “It’s rather scholarly. Not many people would name themselves after a 14th century poet and his most famous work. Are you interested in ancient and historically important literature…? Some of it is quite fascinating.”

The man dipped his head, seemingly unable to even choke out an answer.

“Did you assault a man named Lyall in an alleyway last night?” Hershel asked bluntly, sipping his tea.

“Lyall.” The man’s eyes widened for a second. “How--?”

“A man named Lyall was assaulted in an alleyway with a blade being stabbed into his neck. The attacker took nothing but sprinted away. Were you the attacker?”

“Lyall’s… Lyall’s my friend… Is he alright?”

“I don’t know, I called up an ambulance for him but I haven’t heard how he’s doing.”

The man looked down into his hands, Hershel noticing he was clearly uncomfortable.

“Could I ask what made you come to this apartment in particular and attack my roommate?” Hershel pressed.

“I-I d-don’t have an answer.” The man’s voice was heavy with guilt.

Hershel decided he wouldn’t be able to get any information out that way and decided to pivot on the topic.

“Well then - the fact you are vibrating at a high frequency is rather strange. Your friend Lyall was as well, believe it or not. Do you know why? It’s quite intriguing.” Hershel made a little humming noise as he sipped his tea.

“Aha.” The man looked up, a thin trembling smile on his face. “You wouldn’t believe me.” 

“I’ve seen quite a few strange things in my life.” Hershel assured the man. 

A knock on the door. The man briefly buried his face in his hands in relief.

Layton got up from his chair, leaving the tea on his desk to open the door, seeing Luke standing there with a ziplock bag and a printout.

“Is-- Is that a lock of my hair?” The man blinked as he saw the ziplock bag. Luke was sure to slip into the room and quickly close the door behind him so the man couldn’t just bolt.

“I had to test it.” Luke shook the bag.

“Ah, what did it come back with?” Layton asked him as Luke handed him the printout punchcard. 

“He’s made of an alternate isotope of carbon to, um, me. And everyone other living thing, I guess. I tested it against a strand of my hair.” Luke explained the printout results seeing as they weren’t exactly self-explanatory. 

Hershel took a moment to process. “And the vibrating…?”

“I think he’s come from another dimension?” Luke awkwardly smiled knowing how silly that sounded. “...He’s not in tune with everything here. And, um.” 

The man lay back on the couch for a moment.

“We also have the exact same DNA structure?”

“Ah.” Hershel seemed a bit surprised, but he had experienced weird things like this in his life and this honestly seemed to be a valid explanation, looking over to the man awkwardly sitting on the couch. Luke could never sit properly and neither did this man. “So, your legal name is?”

The man raised his hands in defeat. “Luke Triton, yes.”

**\--**

Luke was awkwardly sitting opposite this alternate Luke and trying to analyse and note down the differences between their faces. First of all, this other Luke had his hair bleached a beachy blond with pink at the tips. That and the full black outfit. Their faces appeared identical in structure, although the other Luke had grey-ish eyes and a vacant expression. 

“...I cannot see myself dressed like you.” Luke squinted at his counterpart.

“I would be saying the same thing if I were in your situation.” The other Luke shrugged.

Hershel was deep in thought on a sofa, seemingly mentally calculating things in his head. Thoughts had passed through his head about the whole “Future Luke” incident around 10 years ago, and he was still somewhat suspicious. Clive had managed to construct and play the character of a 23 year old Luke with remarkable consistency and ease. This other Luke seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“You’re probably thinking that this has to be some kind of trick.” The other Luke spoke aloud. “...you know, what with the whole Clive Dove thing.” 

“I’m inclined to be suspicious, yes.” Hershel replied as he continued to ponder over the evidence he’d been given and what he’d observed.

“Hershel, I got a lock of hair while he was sleeping and our DNA was a match.” Luke reminded him.

“That’s true.” Hershel murmured, still deep in thought. “Well then. I suppose we have a bona fide second Luke here, at least from what we’ve gathered evidence wise...”

“Do you… want me to explain?” The other Luke leaned back against the couch, crossing one leg over the other rather casually and putting his hands behind his head. 

“That would help me understand what’s happening.” Hershel nods.

The other Luke mulled over his answer in his head. “...I’m from a different timeline, or reality, dimension, whatever.” He shrugs. “The closest major to yours. Me and my group stole a dimension transfer thing-y and I decided to give it a test run to see what the closest timeline to ours is like.”

Hershel raised a finger to pause the conversation. “So… Your friend Lyall must have come through with you.”

“He must’ve.” The other Luke exhaled, suddenly remembering that his friend was somehow stabbed by someone for no reason here...

.Luke on the other hand had a brief ponder. “...Did you have a plan on what you were going to do once you got here?” He commented.

“...Not… really. I just wanted to stand outside the professor’s old flat only to find another version of myself here…” The other Luke looked down to his lap.

“And smashed several of my artifacts.” Hershel commented offhandedly...

“...What’s it like in your, um, timeline?” Luke asked.

“Honestly, I think the best way to explain it would be to let you see it?” The other Luke murmured. “...It’s… It’s different. It seems wonderful here, by comparison, I guess.”

“I’d quite like to see another dimension, even if just for a short time.” Hershel commented, sounding quite intrigued, stroking his chin. He’d started doing that while thinking since he decided to ditch his hat.

“I… I don’t think… it would be safe for you.” The other Luke awkwardly choked out. “...Other Luke should be fine.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Layton arrives home to find Luke with a bad injury and an unconscious man on the floor. Said unconscious man had tricked Luke into letting him in under the guise of being there to pick up an artifact, and had attacked suddenly but passed out when they made skin contact. Upon finding that the assailant was vibrating, Luke went to test a strand of his hair chemically while Layton interrogated him as he woke. It turns out the man was in fact a version of Luke from another dimension! But why is he here...? Luke decides to set off to his dimension to check what's happened.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: None for this chapter!

It was probably irresponsible to suddenly run off to go off on some interdimensional excursion. But Luke had decided it would be fun to go and solve some big mystery somewhere with another version of himself. Although he and Layton were often called on by Scotland Yard to help solve small cases, it had been a long time since Luke had been involved in anything big like this. In the meantime, although Hershel would’ve liked to come, since the other Luke had ominously told him it likely wouldn’t be safe for him in particular.

It had been a day since the other Luke had shown up, and they’d decided to start calling him Dante just to make things easier. But Luke had just packed a bag of things he was bringing to this other dimension. Snacks, water, first aid, cash, a change of clothes, etc. Hershel had quietly snuck in a bit of chocolate for him while he wasn’t looking. But Dante was just about ready to head out to this other dimension, and Luke and Hershel were just finishing up preparing.

Luke had gotten changed into a warm jacket and a button up shirt, having taken off his blue fedora to just comb his hair in front of the mirror. Hershel had snatched the comb off him to comb his hair for him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” Luke asked as Hershel ran the comb through the back of his hair. “I’m sure it’d be fun. It’s been too long since we did a big investigation…”

“Ah, I think I’ll be taking other Luke’s word for it when he says it wouldn’t be safe.” Hershel chuckled… “...And, well, I have those midterms that need marking, artifacts to try and patch up, and… I’m still worried about the fact the other Luke’s friend was attacked for no reason by some shadowy figure...”

“Oh. I almost forgot about… all that…” Luke blinked before Hershel gently turned him around by the shoulders so he could comb his fringe, carefully combing it back neatly. 

“I don’t know who attacked him, but I feel he may be connected to this whole mystery… And I’d like to figure that out.” Hershel carefully smoothed Luke’s hair with his thumb after running the fine comb through his fringe.

“What about those artifacts?” Luke murmured as Hershel ran the comb through his fringe again.

“I can’t say that I’m  _ not  _ upset… But I can try to put them back together.” Hershel shook his head before faintly smiling, reaching for Luke’s hat to place gently back on his head. “I’m going to miss you, you know.”

“We’ve gone longer without seeing each other.” Luke teased, but his smile quickly faded. Truth he told, he didn’t like being separated from Hershel for more than a couple of days. The cozy apartment just began to feel cramped and lonely rather than snug and warm. It was usually Hershel who was off on conferences, but...

“If it’s any consolation, dear Luke, my colleague at the university who teaches quantum physics and dimensional geometry has a theory that all dimensions are technically existing on top of each other. We’d technically only be a few metres away from each other if you think of it like that.” Hershel faintly smiled. “Just something to think about if it gets especially bad.”

A knock on the door. Luke turned his head to grab the doorknob, opening it to see Dante standing at the door. On closer inspection now that Luke knew that this Dante figure was him from another dimension, he caught several similarities. Firstly, Dante was rather short for a man, barely standing 5’7 tall, Luke’s exact height - and secondly, dull expressionless grey eyes.

“Ah, Other Luke.” Hershel smiled faintly. “I suppose you are ready to go? I’m just wondering how you’re going to get back and take Luke here with you.”

“Well, this thing.” Dante showed the strange device on his forearm with all the dials and switches. “Apparently it’s meant to recall you to your dimension of origin? It looks like it lets you take the objects you’re touching, well, as long as it’s not the floor.”

“Why the gloves?” Luke asked as Hershel zipped up his backpack for him.

“Didn’t other Luke pass out when he touched you?” Hershel pointed out as he adjusted the backpack straps to be tight on Luke’s back. “He may be trying to avoid something like that happening again.”

“Yeah, that’s the point.” Dante flexed his fingers in the gloves.

“I thought we decided we were going to call him Dante…” Luke murmured.

“...I struggle to see you or any version of you as a ‘Dante’, to be fully honest.” Hershel shrugged, looking the other Luke up and down. Same kind of hat, same eyes, same nose, same jawline… Even if their fashion was rather different, and one of them had bleached hair, he still looked distinctly  _ Luke _ . “...Which isn’t to say it’s... a bad nickname.”

“It’s a bit nice for someone to actually call me by my proper name.” Dante had a twitch of a smile, beginning to configure the recall device on his forearm. “I’m going to fire this up once you’ve said your goodbyes, okay?”

“J...just give me a moment.” Luke spun around to immediately receive a tight hug from Hershel. Hershel’s embrace was usually gentle and tender, but Luke noted that his embrace today was crushing. Luke honestly felt there was a silent agreement to… not kiss each other goodbye. Dante seemed…  _ rather  _ upset about all that. Luke could feel an envious gaze on his back even from a simple hug.

“...Please  _ please  _ stay safe.” Hershel spoke softly. “...And come back soon…”

“I will.” Luke whispered softly as Hershel broke the embrace so he could turn back to Dante, standing there awkwardly.

“Well… Let’s head out.” Dante held his gloved hands outstretched.

Luke recognized that if he didn’t just take Dante’s hands now, he probably would never have the strength to. So he grabbed them before he had any second thoughts, not even having a moment to take a second glance back at Hershel.

Hershel watched the two pop out of existence, a loud crack thundering through the air as they did. He gasped lightly but- that was just the natural sound that occurred when travelling dimensions, he guessed. 

Now, to see if he could just do something about Luke’s broken violin...

\--

“ _ Oh my god. _ I think Dante and Lyall are finally coming back, two people on the incoming screen.”

“Holy shit, they’re alive?.”

“I just finished writing them out of the roster…”

“Just go back to the old roster, did you toss it out or something?…”

Luke’s head was buzzing. He felt like his whole body was buzzing. He felt weightless. His sight was barely functioning, and the noise was immense. He covered his ears and cowered, but he was able to recognize he was standing on a metal pad of sorts surrounded by a field of what felt like screaming energy. With each second it seemed to get a bit softer, but the lightheadedness and vibration continued.

Dante simply phased through the energy barrier. He brushed himself off and glanced back at Luke, still cowering. Luke noticed that his other self was no longer in the barrier and decided to try and stagger through it himself, only to find it solid. He stumbled back, confused, but unable to speak from the confusion. A strong feeling of nausea had overtaken him all of a sudden, and the room felt like it was spinning. 

“Dante, can you please tell us if you’re going to head out? And not just leave a note that you’re going to test the thing we stole?” Someone standing at an elevated control panel complained, squinting down at him. “We thought you were dead. And where’s Lyall?”

“Um… He’s stuck in a hospital in the other world.” Dante scratched his head sheepishly.

“Who’s the other guy, then? Did you bring him?”

“I did, he’s… not looking so good?” Dante actually noticed the other Luke was basically on the ground suffering after being thrown into a completely different reality with a completely different atomic structure to his own. Dante recalled that he felt like that too when he emerged in the other Luke’s dimension, he wound up vomiting in an alleyway and thrashing uselessly until his mind got used to everything - it didn’t stop the vibrating, but he could actually function.

“There’s a stabilizer function on the control panel…” The woman standing by the control panel called down. “...Should I press it?”

“I think that’s probably important.” Dante called back up, his eyes still on Luke now just laying on the metal panel. “Try pressing the button?”

Luke was already on the floor, his head spinning, vomit in his throat, vibrating intensely against the metal, lightheaded, weightless, nothing, nothing. He coughed up some of his own vomit and suddenly felt a tingle through his whole body. Then what felt like full on electricity, heat searing not just his skin but his insides. His nerves began to scream. A part of him wondered if this was suddenly a death trap. Shit. He should’ve known. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have trusted the man who came into his house and started attacking senselessly. Oh fuck Hershel doesn’t know if I made it here or not. Oh fuck what if the other Luke goes back to my dimension and pretends to be me. This was a bad idea. This was irresponsible. I’m never going to s

…

The forcefield disappeared as the subject inside was stabilized. 

Dante blinked and went over to the now unconscious Luke, briefly checking his pulse on instinct and sighed in relief. He wasn’t vibrating either. Must’ve stabilized his structure to function properly in this universe.

“He’s all good.” Dante called up to the person at the control panel, who seemed just as relieved. Luke’s breathing seemed to be just fine, if a bit raspy… He briefly pondered what to say to his comrades before standing up.

“Who is the guy you brought through anyway?” The woman leaned over the control panel to try and get a better look at Luke.

“He wanted to come see this place.” Dante explained. “I think we should get him a bed for now?”

“Why would he want to see this?” The woman rolled her eyes. “I’ll just… grab another mattress from somewhere…”

\--

When Luke awoke, he felt all the dizziness had just disappeared. No nausea, no vibration. Nothing. He immediately remembered his thoughts before he fell unconscious and leapt to his feet, noticing he was in a dimly lit room with a bunch of other foam mattresses, pillows, and blankets strewn around. He briefly checked his back to check that his bag was still with him- yes, thankfully. He spotted a shut door a couple of metres away, running directly into it but grabbing the handle to fling it open, to spot Dante sitting in a corridor on an old couch. No one else was around.

“You!!” Luke pointed on instinct, exasperated. “What was that about?!”

“Oh-- do you mean the nausea and vomiting when you got here? And good morning.” Dante was carefully drawing lines on the notepad with a pencil and an eraser tucked in the notepad’s spiral binding. Perhaps this Dante carried a notepad with him as well.

“You didn’t tell me!” Luke complained before making an attempt to calm down, pinching the bridge of his nose again, reaching for his head to feel that, yes, he still had his hat jammed on.

“...T...that just kind of happens when you enter a new dimension, I think.” Dante smiled sheepishly. “Truth be told, I’m glad we actually made it back safely…”

“You didn’t know if we could make it back here?!” Luke raised his voice an octave, suddenly unable to calm himself. This man had just taken a chance on both their lives and didn’t even tell him! Hershel wouldn’t even KNOW what happened to him.

“Well. I’ll try to be more honest from now on, I suppose.” Dante conceded, softly. “You haven’t seen much of this world yet, have you?”

“...Why do you  _ live  _ here?” Luke looked up at the ceiling and noticed all sorts of mould beginning to grow and fester. “It’s awful. Can you not pay rent?”

“There aren’t really any better places, unfortunately..” Dante shrugged before getting to his feet. “I have deliveries to make around London, I think you should come along so you can see the place.”

“Is London that different?”

“A lot.” Dante tapped his pen on his chin and got to his feet. “I think the best thing to do would just be to show you.”

Luke decided to take his word for it.

Dante had a little beat up car in the building’s garage. There were a couple of other cars around, but the parking lot seemed remarkably empty to Luke. Well, he saw that there were various piles of items stacked around in unorganized piles. Dante unlocked the car and checked his notepad. Luke looked over Dante’s shoulder to see that there was a little map sketch along with the shortest calculated route sketched onto the notepad. He’d made a puzzle for himself and solved it. Interesting. He leaned in to place the notepad on the dashboard.

“What kind of deliveries do you make?” Luke asked, Dante beginning to lead him to a door at the edge of the parking lot.

“I make deliveries throughout London to people who don’t have the money to buy food.” Dante explained as he opened the door, revealing a brightly lit makeshift kitchen. A man stood inside cleaning a rather large pot in an industrial size sink. Despite the dirty parking lot outside, the inside of the kitchen was spotless. A stainless steel countertop, a large pantry, pristine utensils and kitchen knives hanging above the stove… Atop the countertop sat several takeout containers of what seemed to look like spaghetti in cheese sauce.

“Ayyye. Dante-- and the other guy, too!” The man looked over his shoulder with a smile missing several teeth, nodding to acknowledge Luke, but he seemed too busy washing the pot to come over and shake his hand, despite Luke now rather embarrassingly having his hand stuck out. “The food should still be warm in there so try to get it out quick, awight?”

“Will do.” Dante picked up half of the containers, looking over to Luke who was awkwardly putting his hand down. “Can you help me carry the other half?”

Luke did so without question, having a quick ponder. He rushed ahead of Dante to hold the door for him. “Do you work for the government or something?” He asked as Dante walked ahead of him through the doorway. “This doesn’t seem like enough food for the whole city…”

Dante snorted at the idea of him being a government worker as they approached the beat-up car. “Nope, but I deliver to this area. I have friends who do other spots in the city.”

“...Shouldn’t, you know, the government be doing this?”

“Oh, well, the government isn’t really around anymore. Cops are still around, though.” Dante rolled his eyes as he reached to open the car trunk. “Bastards.”

“Wh...what?”

“And your world  _ has _ a government still?” Dante murmured in disbelief as he slammed the trunk down to close it. It popped up a bit and he tried to forcibly close it by pushing both his hands down, which took a few seconds but it eventually did click.

“...Y...yes? But-- is food that expensive?”

“Not expensive as much as everyone is poor. People steal it a lot.” Dante hopped into the car while Luke hopped into the passenger seat. Dante immediately fastened his seatbelt, slotted the keys into the ignition, turned it, and floored it to head to the parking lot exit. Luke was thrown back into his seat in surprise, but as they pulled out, Luke could finally see London.

Potholes and smashed windows. Too bright orange sunset light. Smog. Dirty pavements. Luke blinked for a second before Dante spoke up again, although softly.

“I’ve done it before.”

“You have?!” Luke gasped in shock. He couldn’t see himself stealing food, so-- that was just a shock.

“Me and my friends have enough food, but, well, not everyone. I usually give it to people who need it. And then we started the whole food distribution thing…” Dante explained as he glanced at the notepad he had propped up on the dashboard.

“...Did your Her-  _ professor  _ ever teach you about being a gentleman?” Luke asked quietly before grabbing onto the ceiling handle as Dante did a rather dangerous corner.

“Of course he did! Is distributing food to the needy not gentlemanly, even if it was made from stolen ingredients?” Dante didn’t seem phased by the corner, leaning into it a bit and barely noticing Luke’s distress. “...also, you call him Hershel? Why?”

“I thought it was a bit weird to call my partner by ‘professor’ rather than his first name.” Luke explained, a fond smile coming to his face for just a moment. “So I started calling him Hershel, it’s more personal.”

“I can understand that…” Dante murmured quietly, and for a couple of moments there was silence in the car. The radio was static. There was a tape deck and a couple of tape cassettes around just behind the clutch. Luke looked over to his other self and tried to read an expression from his perpetually damp eyes. It took a few moments but Luke briefly remembered  _ the look  _ that Dante had given him even when he was just embracing Hershel. After several long seconds of silence, Dante spoke up. “I’m sorry for lying to get into your apartment and flipping out.”

“What made you do it?” Luke leaned back into his seat.

“I really, really don’t know.” Dante admitted after once again a few seconds. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t gentlemanly of me. I was angry.”

Dante then pulled over to the curb all of a sudden, slamming the breaks. Luke grabbed the ceiling handle in sheer surprise and gripped it tight.

“We’re here.” Dante hopped out of the car. “Do you mind helping me carry the food?”

“I don’t mind.” Luke hopped out as well to help carry the containers of cheesy spaghetti. Not the most fancy meal, but it did look quite nice. Cooked with care.

Dante carried the to a small flat and knocked on the door. The door opened to reveal a man, looking relieved. Several children appeared to be sitting inside the half ruined flat, all looking rather malnourished.

“Thank you, sir.” The man took the containers from Dante, looking over to see Luke awkwardly stumbling over with the other containers. He raised his eyebrow, clearly not recognizing him.

“Oh, sorry. My name is Luke Triton, sir.” Luke stuck a free hand out to shake the man’s hand with a beaming smile, noticing Dante’s eyes suddenly piercing into his back.

Dante exhaled, tipping his hat over his eyes for a moment. “Good sir, would you mind distributing this to the rest of the block? I have personal matters to take care of today.”

“Will do. I have a few people coming over to pick it up, we should be fine for the night.”

“Okay, good. It’ll probably be more of this tomorrow, if that’s okay?”

“It’s better than nothing.” 

\--

Luke and Dante were shortly driving back to the weird office building where Dante was living. There was a silence hanging in the air that was becoming more dense and heavy by the second.

“You shouldn’t have just given your name out like that.” Dante spoke up, breaking the silence. His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel.

“Why not?” Luke murmured, looking over to him.

“The police are  _ looking  _ for Luke Triton.” Dante glanced over, making a forceful gesture to himself. “They’re looking for  _ me _ .”

“Because you’re connected to Hershel?” Luke had a feeling this was why, but just asked for confirmation.

“Yes, because they think if they find me then they’ll find the professor—and everyone-- but I don’t even  _ know  _ where he is or what’s bloody going on.” Dante hissed. “Actually, take a look in the glovebox.”

Luke decided to open it and found a whole stack of partially ripped papers, nestled underneath a cigarette box and a lighter. He took just one and stared at his own 19 year old self on the poster.

_ WANTED _

_ LUKE TRITON _

_ WHITE - MALE - 5’7 - BROWN HAIR - BROWN EYES _

_ REWARD TO BE DISCUSSED _

“Of course the photo’s outdated.” Dante commented, a small sly smile on his face. “I… bleach my hair and wear black and suddenly I’m unrecognizable. Anyway, that’s why I’m going by Dante.” 

  
  
“Where…” Luke paused for a moment. “Where  _ is  _ Hershel, anyway? He isn’t dead, is he?”

“Oh, ha. He just so happened to wind up fulfilling the whole ‘Future London’ thing.” A bitter smile appeared on Dante’s face. “If you would believe it.”

“I’m-- what?  _ How? _ ” Luke needed a moment for that to sink in. How on Earth did... 

“Well, I honestly wasn’t there to help him with whatever he was going through just after the whole Clive Dove Fucks London Up The Ass incident. I was about to be dragged off to New York and couldn’t do anything. I don’t even know what he was going through.” Dante gripped the steering wheel, raising his voice as it became hoarse.

His knuckles were white. Luke opened his mouth to say something but Dante continued his rant.

"Maybe seeing Claire again and having her fuckin’ plant a big ol’ kiss on his lips triggered him badly enough to want her back! You know, considering I was going to be leaving in a couple of weeks and he’d be left all alone! I was dealing with my own shit! And then-- and then--” He stopped himself.

Luke didn’t expect an outburst like that and just went quiet. “...I’m s-sorry.”

“How did the professor respond to you having to up and go to New York because dad’s an asshole?” Dante spoke quieter, but his voice was a bit croaky now.

“I don’t remember much.” Luke murmured. “A lot of tears from both of us. I remember we got fish and chips a couple of times to just get in some good memories…”

“That... was a nice sunset the second time we did that...” Dante sniffled… “Walking into that apartment and seeing all those happy photos of you and the professor hurt. What did you do? You’re living a happy life and the country isn’t fucking chaos. This whole hellhole is probably my fault somehow.”

“You don’t k-”

“So many starving people. So many dead people. This country is fucked, no one has any meds, it’s a fucking miracle we have running water. We had to hook that up ourselves, by the w-”

“L-Luke. It can’t be your f-”

“It COULD be!” Dante shouted, his grey eyes beginning to leak crystalline tears, the car falling silent.

Luke decided to stay quiet, looking down into his lap. He could hear his other self trying to hold in tears, sniffling and trying to keep his breathing regular.

“...I think we should try and figure out what’s different between our timelines.” Luke spoke after several seconds. “...then we can… try and figure out what’s happened.”

Dante didn’t respond, still trying to muffle and hold in his tears.

“Luke - if we can figure out where our timelines diverged, maybe I could… try to help... you fix things.”

Dante decided to pull the car over to the curb again with a slam of the breaks, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to keep his tears down.

“I don’t think that’ll fix this whole country.” Dante spoke hoarsely. “A revolution would fix things, and sure, we’d probably have to kill the professor and form some kind of new government, but it would  _ fix things  _ for the greater good.”

“Do-- do you really want him dead?” Luke spoke softly, trying to reason with him.

Tears began to brim and flow over. Dante refused to let himself sob, but the tears were flowing. “N...no.”

“...Is Misthallery still around?”

“I visited a couple of months ago...”

“Let’s head there.”

“I’ll drive, then.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Luke enters Dante's dimension, a strange London where everything seems... different. Luke finds out this London seems to be largely police controlled, and Dante and his friends all deliver food to those in need. Luke accidentally gives his name out to someone and is scolded, and after a meltdown the two decide to go to Misthallery.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Parental shunning, discussions of AIDS

Luke had taken the driver's seat. The drive to Misthallery from London was a couple hours long, and Dante was now in the passenger seat. Luke looked over to his counterpart and his dull grey eyes as he leaned his head against his seatbelt and the window. Although his rational brain had accepted that yes, this man _was_ him from the timeline nextdoor, he had struggled to accept it emotionally. He seemed so different. Quick to anger and rather vulgar. The outburst earlier had strangely enough cemented emotionally that this man was indeed _him_.

They’d left London about an hour ago. The countryside was spread out with endless grass and a somewhat bumpy road. It had been ages since they’d seen another car, and truthfully the countryside seemed just as serene as Luke had remembered it. He didn’t get out of London enough back home in the first place. Seeing it here was good enough.

Dante quietly opened the glove box, grabbing his packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

“If you’re going to light that do you mind winding down the window?” Luke asked quietly.

Dante lit the cigarette and shook it for a moment, putting both the packet and the lighter back in the glovebox, and grabbed the crank to wind the window down. Luke decided to grab a random cassette, not bothering to read the label and put it in the tape deck, just wondering what music his other self listened to.

"Tell me about the professor. Hershel." Dante murmured. "How's your life?"

"Why? You aren't going to flip out on me, w...will you?"

"I don't have the energy to be angry." Dante replied quietly as he inhaled some of the smoke from his cigarette. "Just tell me how your life is. I need a happy story.”

“Um, firstly, though, smoking is bad for you and you shouldn’t do it.” Luke lightly chided. 

“I’m pretty sure everything else will kill me before these.” Dante mumbled.

“Well, it’s not… cool.” Luke reasoned.

“They calm me down and sometimes I just need to calm myself down, leave me alone.” Dante spoke. “The professor wasn’t wearing his hat when I saw him. Why.”

“Do you want the whole story? I could condense it.” Luke asked.

“The whole thing.”

\--

Luke knocked on Hershel’s office door, with a little paper bag. Hershel had forgotten his lunch again. A part of Luke wondered if he deliberately ‘forgot’ the bag if only to get Luke to pay him a visit in the middle of his long workday. Today Hershel was writing up a lecture he was going to give - a big talk for a conference hosted right in Gressenheller. Obviously he was stressed out, but that was nothing a bit of Luke company couldn’t solve.

Hershel came to the door and opened it, clearly having remembered that he actually forgot his lunch. He beamed to see Luke at the door, holding his lunch bag with a faint smile. Although the man’s expression shifted for just a second - mild confusion having come onto his face. 

Luke closed the door behind him with his hip to give his love a tight hug to just bask in his scent for a moment. But-- something was amiss. Hershel seemed shorter, and there was an obvious reason. He wasn’t wearing his hat!

“I was worried I’d have to walk down to the cafe across the road.” Hershel chuckled as he returned the tight embrace, squeezing his partner tightly.

“The cafe isn’t too bad, is it?” Luke failed to keep a faint smile off his face as he pulled away from the hug.

“It’s just fine, although their muffins tend to be a bit dry.” Hershel took the bag and opened it, seeing Luke had slipped in a little biscuit as well as the sandwiches he’d made the night earlier. “Thank you for dropping this off. I appreciate it.”

Hershel went to place it on his desk, Luke’s eyes on Hershel’s hair. His hair was disheveled, and in the gold lamp light of the professor’s office it even seemed a bit ginger. Beautiful. But also, he… never took his hat off. _Never._

The professor’s hat sat on the coffee table - and Luke decided to pick it up as Hershel tore open the lunch bag to make a sort of mat for himself. He snuck up behind him and dropped his hat on the professor’s head.

“Here.” Luke gave him another hug from behind. “You forgot something.”

“Aha…” Hershel faintly smiled and took the hat off again, holding it for a moment to just stare at it. It _was_ getting a bit tattered… “I’ve been thinking.”

“You do a lot of thinking.” Luke commented as Hershel placed the hat atop the pile of marked papers. He continued to hold him, just appreciating the man’s warmth and scent.

“Yes, but, about my constant wearing of my hat.” 

“What about it?”  
  


“I… I think it’s time to move on.” Hershel sighed.

“Ah.” Luke took a moment to… think that over. He was-- moving on? How?

Claire was the woman which he _would_ have spent his life with forever and ever if she hadn’t been killed. Hershel constantly explained that being a gentleman, he always wore his hat, but Luke even in his youth noticed his dedication to wearing it seemed more like a safety blanket than anything related to being gentlemanly.

The idea that he could ever move on seemed unthinkable. Impossible.

“You’re…” Luke wasn’t sure how to respond. He just held Hershel tighter.

“At least… I can try to move on.” Hershel murmured, leaning back against Luke.

“You can’t… just stop being sad about her, though...” Luke briefly stroked Hershel’s hair seeing as it was exposed.

“I know, I don’t think I can ever stop grieving.” Hershel spoke softly. “But it’s not fair on you to make the hat a core part of my identity when you’re here.”

“Mmmm?”

“I really don’t want you to feel like you’re a second option.” Hershel spoke softly.

Luke felt a smile on his face until he spoke again.

“I’m so, so glad I have you. I must be the luckiest man in the world.” Hershel was sounding rather choked up. “You’re much much more than I could ever deserve.”

“You aren’t going to throw the hat out, are you?” Luke murmured.

“No, no, I’ll… I’ll keep it up on a shelf somewhere in here...” Hershel was now sniffling, his shoulders shaking. He was clearly crying, but Luke felt his own vision becoming blurred and his throat becoming tight.

“I love you.” The words slipped from Luke’s lips. He’d said it a billion times but he meant it each damn time. _I love you. I love you. I love you._

“I love you too.” Hershel’s voice was shaky, choked up, and then he just began full on crying. Luke held him tighter, just letting the man cry it out. He hadn’t seen Hershel cry in years, and hearing him just start full on sobbing felt weirdly special if only because the man trusted him enough to cry like this in his presence.

Luke was sure to hold him the whole time he cried, although after a bit Hershel realized he had been crying for a while and tried to halt his tears. 

“Ssh. If you need to cry more, go ahead.” Luke assured, squeezing him even tighter.

“No, no, I have these-- lecture notes to write…” Hershel insisted, trying his best to take deep breaths - and failing.

“To hell with the lecture for now, you deserve a moment to feel things.” Luke whispered softly.

“Mm.” Hershel sniffled, the tears still flowing freely down his cheeks. “...Do you think we could go out for dinner tonight? I need stress relief from everything today.”

“I saw a nice Thai place on the corner, one of my coworkers was raving about it…” Luke suggested. “Looks casual enough, too.”

“Perfect. These lecture notes should be… done by 8, with my current pace…”

“When’s the lecture?”  
  


“A couple of days…”

“Oh.” Luke snorted. “Take a bit of time to relax, just do as much as you can until 5.”

“Well, alright, fine.” Hershel conceded, sniffling once again.

\--

“Me and Hershel get takeout from that place a lot, now, they do a super super good vegetarian panang curry.” Luke babbled on, the road still stretching off into the distance. “Oh, and tofu tom kha. You need a taste for spicy, though, Hershel isn’t a big fan but I can’t get enough of it.”

“So…” Dante spoke up after several minutes of Luke’s story and tangential rambling about their little date afterwards. “...the professor decided you weren’t the ‘second option’.”

“Did you ever get told you… weren’t a second option?” 

“No? I haven’t talked to him since I was… 16.” Dante sighed.

“Did he write to you? Me and Hershel always kept--”

“He kept up the writing until he fulfilled the Future London thing.” Dante mumbled.

“Why’d you come back, anyway?” Luke asked quietly.

“London’s just… my home, you know? Even if it’s a hellhole.” Dante looked over to Luke as he took a brief puff off his cigarette.. “I considered moving back to Misthallery, but I don’t really have nice memories there besides meeting the professor.”

“Ah. Misthallery. Loneliness, terrible school, sitting in my room for 6 months, giant spectre ripping through the town, end of the world approaching...” Luke snorted bitterly. “Dad using me to predict where the next attack will be and scolding me for being sad… At least Hershel came along. That’s just about the only good memory.”

“Dad’s a piece of shit.” Dante agreed. “...I know I already asked you this, but, ah.”

“Sorry?”  
  


“Do you talk to him still?”

“Oh, no no no.” Luke chuckled, although there was a hint of bitterness in his laugh. “He cut me off after Hershel and I disclosed our relationship to him over letter. We decided we should tell him eventually.”

“Did you tell him you’d been, you know, a thing since you were ten years old?”

“No, we decided against that, and still got disowned on the basis of liking men.” Luke smiled, but Dante could read his smile as incredibly bitter. “...Honestly. I wouldn’t even mind if he cut contact with Hershel over that. I can understand that. Sketchy shady stuff there-- but he cut contact with me just because I’m gay.”

“Is he one of those people who’s going on about the ‘gay cancer’ shit?”

…

Dante looked over at Luke who had seemingly fallen silent, staring out into the road. Did he notice him speaking? He must be deep in thought.

_-I thought better of you-_

“Sorry, is your dad going on about the ‘gay cancer’ thing?” Dante repeated.

“Oh--” Luke snapped out of it. “...Yes, I was remembering the letter, sorry.”

“It’s happening here too, just… letting you know.” Dante mumbled, taking a puff of his cigarette...

“Hershel’s started reading the newspaper less considering there’s usually always at least one article saying we’re all ‘recruiting the kids’ and ‘pushing it on the children’.” Luke shook his head.

“Says the professor.” Dante gave a defeated laugh.

Luke couldn’t help but laugh at that, but he also shot Dante a bit of a look at the same time. “Do you remember Mr. Cliffdrop?”

“Who was he?” Dante blinked.

“Um, our Year 4 teacher… The one with the moustache and the bowtie.” Luke tapped his chin, recalling.

“Oh, yeah, him.”

“ _We_ had the biggest crush on him.” Luke gave a mischievous smile, reminding Dante that yes he did too.

“Oh. Right.” 

“He was cool.”

Dante sat up as he extinguished his cigarette and dropped it out the window. They had passed a road sign. He had recognized this area- they were nearing Misthallery.

“It looks like we’re just about there.”

“...What’s Misthallery like here, anyway?”

“Um. An anarchist commune?”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s just kind of what happened to most small towns outside of London, truth be told…”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Dante and Luke have a discussion on their dad as well as why Luke's version of the professor decided to stop wearing his hat.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: This chapter contains flashbacks to the events of Spectre's Call/Last Specter. Luke here is severely underage so if that bothers you, please skip this chapter. Also warning for suicide attempts. If you do not think you are in a good mindset to read, please feel free to skip this chapter.

Luke stopped the car just outside the rope bridge leading into Misthallery, carefully parking it by a bush. The moment he stepped outside, he was immediately hit with the distinctive fresh air. Home London was smoggy enough, let alone this world’s London. But the air here was clean. It was crisp. Misthallery had that sweet valley air, and truth be told, Luke hadn’t visited his hometown in too long. He took a moment to breathe it in as Dante hopped out beside him.

“It’s a relief from all the smog, eh?” Dante smiled faintly.

“Ahem, yes.” Luke gathered himself from just the mere scent of the air. “You said this place was a... commune, now?” His eyes drifted to the hills in the distance. Misthallery was in a bit of a valley, and truth be told if there was something he missed it was the distantly looming hills.

“I visited here a couple months ago to just get away from London.” Dante began to walk over the rope bridge. “...And, you know. To reminisce.”

“Not much to remini-”  
  


“You know what I came to reminisce on.” Dante interrupted, sighing after he did.

Luke went quiet as Dante lead the way into the town. He was able to glance around and see the town’s brick and stone buildings and canals had stayed more or less the same. Unchanging. Perhaps a little run down, but that had always been Misthallery’s charm.

“D...do you think we could stop by the Golden Garden and head inside?” Luke suggested.

“Everyone here just made the decision to block it off to preserve it.” Dante shook his head.

“I… I was hoping we could go visit and try to figure out more what’s different between here and hopefully it’d jog both our memories.”

“We could go to Paddy’s. It’s still around…”

Luke gasped in excitement. “It’s still open here?! It closed a couple of years back in my world!” 

“Well, I guess we have to go there now.” 

\--

Luke and Dante had quickly made their way to Paddy’s. Luke had set out a notepad and jotted down everything he could remember from the time he met the professor for the first time in Misthallery while Dante was busy looking at the menu. 

“Would you believe me if I said the bread here got better?” Dante looked over the menu to see Luke frantically jotting down on the notepad.

“Really?” Luke looked up for a second before returning to the frantic writing.

“He makes it all himself from local ingredients now.” Dante commented. “They expanded the apple orchards to grow wheat and other crops as well. And since water runs down from the mountains, this place is basically completely self-sustaining.”

“Oh, wow.” Luke sounded rather impressed, before quickly looking down again to keep writing, briefly tapping his chin with his pen to try and recall in as much detail as possible.

“I got the fettuccine last time I came here. Good stuff. Handmade pasta and everything.” Dante murmured, putting the menu down, noticing that Luke hadn’t even touched the menu or his cup of water. “Do you want me to just grab you the fettuccine?”

“Is it vegetarian?” Luke didn’t look up from the notepad.

“Yes, it is.”

“Alright, just that, then.” Luke nodded, tearing the pages he wrote off the spiral notepad and placing them neatly beside the cutlery, then passing the notepad to Dante. “Do you mind writing down everything you can remember from when you met Hershel?”

“Like…” Dante reached over to take the pen. “Anything… in particular?”

“Um, everything that’s worth remembering up until… the whole Crown Petone incident.”

“Alright. Do you mind going to the counter and ordering…?” Dante asked as he took a moment to think over what actually motivated him to send a letter impersonating his father to an absolute stranger.

“I’ll do that now.” Luke slid back his chair to go to the front counter to place both his and Dante’s order.

\--

The sun was setting and little Luke Triton sniffed the air. 10 years old and sitting at a table in Paddy’s. He hadn’t come here in a while, but now he was sitting here with a stranger and a semi stranger. He was doodling on a napkin as he usually did when he came here with his mum and dad, but it seemed the two strangers who he’d come with were busy in conversation.

The food here always took forever. Luke sighed and looked over to the menu, remembering he’d ordered roast lamb. Mum’s favourite meal was roast lamb with mint sauce, although since she’d gone on her _trip_ they hadn’t had it. It would be a nice comfort in these times

The last 6 months had been _awful._

“So, Professor.” The woman named Emmy with the mass of long chocolate curls and the yellow coat tapped her fork against a glass of water. “Do you often go on long road trips to Scarborough at 11pm on Tuesday nights, leaving you unable to attend work the next day?”

“Not particularly.” Mr. Layton exhaled, briefly tipping his hat over his eyes. “I suppose that incident is what pushed Delmona to assign you to me.”

“Yes, correct.” Emmy nodded. “Now, even though I’m your assistant, I think it would be beneficial for you to try and find better coping methods for whatever you’re feeling when that happens.”

“I try to write things in my journal.” Mr. Layton explained. “It helps me get the thoughts out of my head-”

“But clearly that isn’t helping.” Emmy reminded him. “Do you ever have anyone to talk to?”

“I… do not.” Mr. Layton conceded. Well, that was depressing.

“I wish I had people to talk to.” Luke mumbled, slumping over the table. He blew a strand of hair out of his eyes, bored. “Dad doesn’t like talking and Doland’s boring.” 

“Ah, I suppose you two have a similar problem, then.” Emmy rubbed her hands together with a smile. 

Luke gave a little mumble of acknowledgement, going back into his mind again. He spent a lot of time there nowadays, zoning out with his eyes on a glass of water. He wasn’t looking at it, but his eyes had to rest somewhere. Thoughts from earlier were bubbling incessantly from earlier, from when Mr. Layton and Emmy had been trying to solve his door puzzle. What he’d heard from behind the door.

_“I’m not quite sure Luke will be useful to our investigation. We may be endangering him by taking him out to see this ‘spectre’, even assuming he has anything to say at all. If his own father can’t get him to speak...”_

_“Professor! He’s one of our best bets. He can show us around the town.”_

_“We may be putting him in danger, Emmy, I don’t think-”_

Luke looked up to Mr. Layton, deciding those thoughts had stewed enough. “Why didn’t you want my help for the investigation? I’ve shown you where all the spots where the spectre attacked…”

“Well, if there’s a dangerous ancient entity about… perhaps it may be best for you to stay home and keep yourself safe.” Mr. Layton spoke sympathetically.

  
“No! I’m staying!” Luke suddenly slammed his fists on the table, making Emmy jump in surprise. “I called you here and as the one who can predict where the spectre attacks, I should be the one to witness it!”

“I don’t think you should be making that decision for yourself.” Mr. Layton spoke softly, trying to prevent Luke from raising his voice once again.

“I say he’s fine.” Emmy shrugged, tapping her fork on the glass again. “Stop trying to get rid of the poor kid - he deserves an adventure, doesn’t he? Perhaps the whole thing will make him feel better and make him… functional.”

Layton’s eyes went between Luke’s suddenly fierce expression and Emmy’s ‘stop trying to ditch the kid he’s coming with us’ look. “I don’t think you understand the danger here.”

\--

Luke sure as hell didn’t understand! He couldn’t sleep that night, partially due to the spectre. He wasn’t afraid-- he wasn’t afraid. He was very afraid, actually, even though the thing had attacked and passed. It only ever attacked one place and then disappeared, but that didn’t mean he was on edge.

Emmy was fast asleep, but Luke was sitting bolt upright on the other side of the bed. This hotel they’d hired only had two double beds and the professor had insisted on sleeping alone. He wouldn’t sleep in the same bed as a lady and he thought Luke should sleep in that bed as well.

Luke slid out of the bed. The professor had been writing in his journal all night since they’d settled in this room, although truth be told that was barely 30 minutes ago.

“Mr. Layton…” Luke caught the professor’s attention, having suddenly approached him. 

The professor instantly closed the journal. “Did you need something? Did you want to go home?” He asked.

“No, I said already I don’t want to go home!” Luke asserted, staring up at him with steely eyes. “But I can’t sleep.”

“I’m sure you could sleep better if you were home in your own bed, hmm?” The professor raised an eyebrow.

“If the danger’s passed…” Luke suddenly had a thought. “Why do you still want me to go? You said the spectre was gone for tonight.” 

...The professor did not respond to that, ignoring it. “Would you like some tea? Some warm milk?” He tucked that journal into his jacket pocket. Luke’s eyes traced it, thinking he should snatch it later to have a read. The professor had ignored his previous question, but some warm milk would be nice.

“Warm milk, please.” Luke conceded.

The professor nodded and went to the cabinet to grab a mug, as well as opening a small minifridge to grab some milk - a saucepan was helpfully already on the kitchenette stove.

“...Why are you trying to get rid of me?” Luke repeated, looking up at him again.

“I don’t think you’re going to be safe if you continue to help us with this investigation.” The professor sighed as he poured some milk into the pan, igniting the stove.

“Y-you mean the spectre?”

“In part, yes.” The professor had a small saucepan over a small gas stove to heat the milk. “You’d be safer with your dad at home.”

Luke quietly stewed at the idea of going home. Sure, it was probably safer. But his dad hadn’t heard that he’d headed out and-- and-- he was always so angry and so unreasonable. And he didn’t want to just show up at the doorstep so late at night long after the town had fallen asleep.

“I’m still not going home, Mr. Layton…” 

“Mmm.” The professor made a sound of discomfort, but poured Luke the mug of warm milk to pass to him. “Here. If you change your m-”

“Stop asking me if I want to go back.” Luke gave him a glare. 

“Alright. I think it’s time for us to both go to sleep, hmm?” The professor walked past Luke, pulling up one of the chairs for the kid to sit on as he drank his warm milk. And he took his hat off to reveal a scruffy short mess of gingery hair, his coat being hung on a dresser handle, and shortly he was tucked under the blankets alone in that bed.

…

Luke stared down into his mug as he sat on that chair. 

Every time Mr. Layton insisted he should go home, he felt a pain in his chest. He didn’t want to go home, not just because his father would be angry, but he _wanted to spend time with him._ He had a cool hat and all that. He was smart and tall and-

…

He could steal the journal later. He quickly drained the contents of the mug.

Luke sneaked to the professor’s bedside where he pushed the covers back, stealthily slipping in. The blankets were heavy and the pillow soft, and warm from the man on the other side of the bed, until remembering he needed to hold someone to stay warm.

He shuffled closer to press his face into the professor’s back. His shirt smelled nice - like-- like vanilla. He made a little noise until the professor pushed him back, turning over to see Luke. And the professor shut his eyes, burying his face in his hands.

“ _Good grief, Luke._ ”

“I need to hold something to get to sleep, _professah._ ” Luke wasn’t lying. He shuffled closer until the professor just put a hand over his face to push him away.

“Stop that. This is inappropriate.” The professor had gone from somewhat detached to very much _please get out of the bed_.

“Why is it appropriate for me to hug Emmy, then?” Luke asked, pulling the professor’s hand off his face. “She said I could hold her if I couldn’t sleep!”

“Because-” The professor exhaled. “I know I’ve been asking you if you want to go home but if you keep doing this I _will_ have to take you home.”

“Why haven’t you done it already, then?” Luke pouted. “Just-- hold me.”

The professor shut his eyes and exhaled, burying his face in his hands, until he shakily decided to pull Luke close. Luke gasped lightly in joy, feeling the man’s warmth and being able to smell him. 

“Just this once.” The professor mumbled - the man’s grip was tighter than he’d expected. He’d gone from completely detached and grumpy to a tight embrace.

“Thank you, Mr. Layton.” Luke whispered.

\--

  
  


The Golden Garden. 

Glowing crystals. Clean water. Greenery. Beautiful. Even Luke could appreciate it.

Arianna had left shortly after Loosha had fallen into the depths of the lake. She couldn’t take it and had to leave, but Emmy and Luke had decided to explore. The professor had decided to sit and just enjoy the view, but they had regrouped by the cavern entrance. Luke had enjoyed the exploration, but he was getting hungry- and Emmy had agreed it was perhaps time to leave. The professor seemed to have been leaning against a tree absorbing the atmosphere.

“Professor, this discovery could launch your career! You’d be in all the papers-- front page this time!” Emmy declared with great excitement.

“This wasn’t necessarily a discovery I’d consider archeological.” The professor commented as he gazed out at the cavern bathed in light from the countless glowing crystals, the greenery vibrant yet not moving at all. No wind. The water gleamed brightly. “I’d leave this one to a geologist. I have a coworker I could forward the discovery to...”

“But-- you discovered it!” Emmy insisted. “Who cares if you’d consider it geological? It’s beautiful and you deserve credit! You could get in all the newspapers.”

Luke, on the other hand, was kind of in turmoil. He had explored the Garden, and the spectre was no more. Was his adventure with the professah about to end? What now? He didn’t want it to end. It couldn’t end. This was a crush he was having. The professor had strangely opened his heart a bit more throughout the investigation. And Luke had noticed changes in his own behaviour. For one thing, he was smiling. He was happier. He felt _ALIVE._

Although, he had been a bit of a nuisance, all things considered…

“...I’ve been thinking about things.” The professor spoke darkly after several seconds of silence.

“A change of career? Are you going to become a detective? You make a good one. Part time detective Hershel Layton, part time archeology professor!” Emmy suggested with a beaming smile, which quickly dampened as she saw the man’s expression.

The professor smiled defeatedly, shaking his head.

“I… made the decision last night I must end my life.”

Emmy fell silent. Luke’s eyes widened as he was snapped out of his thoughts.

“...D…” Emmy opened her mouth to speak for a second, but she had found her mind suddenly empty. “...Did-- did this place change your mind? Surely it did!”

Luke couldn’t muster the words. It felt like his brain had stopped. He wanted to kill himself? Well, he was actually aware of that. He had snatched the professor’s journal last night to take a sneaky flick through and found little sentences such as “Luke has nice hair” followed by a lengthy description of how he was going to kill himself. The Final Plan of sorts.

Firstly he would be careful to lock each door and throw away the key. Cut the water supply. Then take the remaining medication he had been taking a few years back for severe headaches. About half a bottle, then get some strong alcohol, drink the bottle, and lay down to die. A quiet death, but he had a couple of calculations written down on the chances of success. About 85%. His backup was to repeat the process if he managed to wake up, being unable to leave the apartment due to having tossed the key. If he couldn’t work up the courage to do it he would die of dehydration or alcohol poisoning.

Luke did not necessarily want to read anyone’s suicide plan in that much detail but the mere thought of the man taking his life felt like a stake through his heart. He had to say something. _He had to do something._

“Well. I wish it did… I suppose it’s a beautiful last triumph, is it not…?” The professor spoke softly.

“Professah!” Luke put his foot down, yelling, his tiny hands in fists. “You don’t need to die! I’d be sad-- and… I…” Tears were now in his eyes. He couldn’t keep speaking. He didn’t know what to do. He just didn’t. That wasn’t a good argument as to why you shouldn’t end your life.

“Well! You’re still here, so I’m not letting you do it!” Emmy announced suddenly. “You do not need to end your life!”

The professor’s eyes went down to Luke who was now sobbing hopelessly. He exhaled. 

For several moments, there was silence through the group apart from Luke’s hopeless blubbering. 

“What made you-- decide…?” Emmy spoke up, hoping to actually grasp what made the man decide such a drastic course of action.

“Well, ah.” The professor briefly tented his fingers. “...I’ve tried very hard to stop this from happening, but, well. I’m in love.” He laughed nervously. “I set countless rules for myself to avoid this but I suppose they don’t work. So.”

Luke immediately thought back to the journal he’d snatched in the night, lightly gasping. Emmy had not read it. Emmy tried to reason with the professor unaware of the situation.

“Well, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to accept your feelings - I’m a lesbian - but that doesn’t mean you have to kill-” Emmy trailed off as she realized what she’d admitted, although she noticed the professor wasn’t giving her any unsavoury looks of the sort. She exhaled in relief. “...Ahem. Regardless. There’s plenty of fish in the ocean, aren’t there…?”

“I wish I could move on from people. I can’t, and…” 

“Just because you have an unrequited crush doesn’t mean you need to off yourself...”

“Emmy, I’m-”

“It’s me.” Luke suddenly spoke up, his hands in fists and eyes red with tears. “I looked in-- I looked in your journal. The s-second one. IT’S ME.”

“What’s in the journal?” Emmy slowly looked to the professor, confused.

The professor remained silent and tipped his hat over his eyes. “...I write down intrusive thoughts to get them out of my head. It helps them pass.” There was a deep shame in his voice. “I throw out what I’ve written when I can. I don’t like to dwell on those thoughts.”

“It’s me!” Luke stomped his foot, deciding it was go time. “...Y-you don’t have to end your life, then, b-because-!”

"Luke, st-”

Luke grabbed his wrist tight, cutting him off and seemingly building up courage. The professor noticed. 

“Luke, please do not.”

_Panic._

"I won't let you! And I love you!!"

_Silence_.

The professor tipped his hat over his eyes. 

No going back now. 

It had been said and Luke was not letting go of his wrist. 

No going back. 

He had to say it too or he’d be lying, and a gentleman _never_ lied.

\--

The professor had returned home to his flat. It was cold. Clark had seemingly been convinced to drop in for dinner with Luke and Emmy in tow to celebrate the safety of Misthallery, and all thanks to the Professor Layton! Emmy had decided to bring takeout, none of them were really up to cooking anything and they were quite happy to just sit around a small table grazing on a ton of fish and chips.

“Professor? Where are the cups? I’m thirsty.” Luke looked over to the professor. The professor had noticed Luke had chosen to sit _right_ next to him, much to his discomfort. A mixed discomfort, as much as he hated to admit even in his mind.

“They’re just-”

“I’ll grab some!”

Luke immediately bounced into the kitchen, not even letting the professor tell him where the cups were. The professor shut his eyes for a moment, pushing the chair Luke had been sitting on away from himself while Clark chuckled.

“Luke’s quite energetic now, isn’t he?” Emmy commented with a faint smile. The professor thought he could see her eyes giving him an expression completely disconnected from her smile.

“He’s never been this energetic.” Clark had gotten himself a couple of fritters and was just carefully grabbing some to put on his plate. “It’s nice to see...”

Slamming and throwing open of cabinet doors could be heard. The professor plucked a chip from the unwrapped crumpled newspaper on the table, quietly hoping Luke wasn’t going to break anything looking for those cups.

“He’s… going through all the cupboards, professor.” Emmy murmured for a second, quietly stating the obvious.

“Oh, let him, he’s fine. He’ll find those cups eventually…” Clark had a warm smile. The professor tapped his fingers on the table nervously until he heard Luke sprinting to the bathroom and slamming the door.

“...The cups are not in the bathroom, Luke.” The professor murmured quietly as he speared a bit of battered fish to put on his own plate.

“Say, Hershel, do you have any wine? I know you don’t drink, but do you have anything around?” Clark asked, tapping his fingers on the table.

“No wine, unfortunately, but I did buy some bourbon on the way here...” The professor smiled as he got up. 

Emmy seemed to be deep in thought for a moment., her eyes “Professor, I’ll take the bottle from you.” 

“Oh, no, I’m going to need it.” The professor smiled defeatedly.

“A victory drink, then?” Clark smiled, clearly no idea what was happening.

“You don’t need to do it.” Emmy hissed to him. “Give me the bottle.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” The professor shook his head. “Emmy, I’ll pour you some if you want it that desperately.”

Emmy drummed her fingers on the table, running her fingers through her curly hair. Regardless on how she felt on all this, she _was_ getting paid to help the man with his schedule… If he was to die, then...

The professor wandered into the kitchen to notice that Luke had basically left every cabinet open- exhaling. He also didn’t seem to take any cups. He went to the pantry where he had been keeping the liquor, opening it to see the place where he’d left it did not in fact have the bourbon.

His eyes went to the rest of the kitchen, when his eyes were caught by a glint in the sink. Approaching it he spotted the bottle, completely empty with all its contents having been clearly tipped down the sink.

Upon closer inspection, one of the cabinets Luke had opened was his medicine cabinet, and every single bottle was missing.

…

Professor Layton knocked on the bathroom door, slowly.

“Luke Triton.”

“Yes, professah?”

“Did you… tip out that whole bottle?”

“Maaaybe.”

The professor laid his forehead against the door, sighing. He should’ve considered all this, until the door opened. Luke had a mischievous smile on his face, at least two dozen small vials of pills now lying empty on the bathroom floor, each one completely empty right next to the toilet.

The professor maintained eye contact for a moment before breaking it. “...I’m sorry.”

“I’m not letting you kill yourself.” Luke spoke with a sudden firmness in his voice.

“I don’t… think you understand.” The professor spoke quietly with his hat over his eyes. “I-- I love you, and you love me, but we can’t and I’m a danger to you. And I won’t be able to move on from this, I know me. I can’t let go of people.”

“It doesn’t mean you need to die.” Luke shrugged.

The professor opened his mouth again before Luke marched right back to the living room where everyone was eating so he could properly tuck in. The professor took a moment to gather himself.

He would have to try and build up the courage to end his life tomorrow, then.

He would not be able to.

\--

Dante put down the pen. He’d written a lot. Luke had been tucking into the pasta he’d ordered and trying his best not to slurp it, and failing. 

“I… think I’ve written everything.” Dante tapped his pen on the notepad. He’d ignored his meal in favour of just pouring his mind through the pen onto the pad.

“What’d you write?” Luke tried to speak as politely as possible with his mouth full.

“What the professor said when he was trying to do my door puzzle, uh, the journal I found, the Golden Garden, thwarting his suicide attempt...” Dante marked his notes with a little star after he looked over and saw Luke’s handwriting was identical to his. To avoid mixing them up.

“Did you also steal his flat key when he was trying to kill himself?” Luke leaned forward with a faint smile.

“Absolutely.” Dante nodded with a grin.

Luke decided to take Dante’s notes and put them next to his own, carefully analysing them. Dante decided to start eating, immediately remembering the homely yet gourmet taste of the meals here at Paddy’s. Homemade pasta and everything. It had been a long time since he’d had a meal as good as this, and he decided to savour it.

“Ah, what’s this about not letting go of people?” Luke commented as he circled a particular segment of Dante’s notes, comparing them against his own. He never heard any of that.

Dante was mid slurp of his pasta. He quickly chewed and swallowed to answer, clearing his throat.

“The professor… mentioned Claire a lot around me.” Dante murmured. “He never really moved on from her, I don’t think. He seemed determined to _not_ move on, in all honesty.”

Luke made a little hmm and tapped the pen on the table. “So… Did he say he loved you at any point after that whole event? Was it a moral qualm or was it Claire?”

“Well, both, obviously, but Claire primarily...” 

“That’s a difference!” Luke raised the pen with a glowing ‘I did it’ smile. “So, your Hershel couldn’t let go of Claire at all! I never even heard about her until the whole Future London incident.”

“He didn’t really let go of Randall either, in all honesty.” Dante commented…

“Oh right, Randall.” Luke remembered. “...Did- did he go to prison here too? For-”

“Eight charges of homicide?”

“Yes, I’m guessing he did go to prison here too.” Luke chuckled.

“I really don’t know how you could keep some ancient artifact mask in your house and not wind up cursed to become a homicidal murderer.” Dante mumbled.

Luke took a moment to ponder before leaning forwards. “So. Your Hershel didn’t let go of Claire or Randall. So, he doesn’t like to let go of people. And your notes here said he was worried he wouldn’t be able to let go of someone else as well.”

Dante paused for a moment before the realization hit him.

“I’m sure he hasn’t let go of Luke Triton yet, has he?” Luke’s smile had returned, now beaming.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Luke and Dante enjoy a meal at Paddy's and discuss their versions of Hershel Layton. Luke comes to the conclusion that Dante's version of the professor seemingly struggled to let go of the people he loved, even more so than Luke's own version
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Bad puns

Dante was a rather reckless driver on country roads as Luke had learned. On the other hand though, there was nothing that he could hit so it wasn’t much of a problem. Just a good ol’ ride. The sun was beginning to go down and Dante had turned the headlights on so they could actually see the road.

“Did you ever listen to The Wall? By Pink Floyd? It came out a few years ago, great album.” Luke commented offhandedly as he tried to compile their notes to figure out what they knew so far. The lack of ability to let go, primarily, circled several times. 

“I’d like it on tape, if I could find a copy...” Dante commented. “Oh, you know what I DO have, though? Thriller. Good stuff.”

“Anyway.” Luke tapped his notepad with the end of the pen. “So. Here’s the plan to save London. I don’t know how we’ll get there but we’ve got to get you into contact with your Hershel.”

“That’s an end goal, not a plan…”

“Yeah, well, we’ll figure out how to get there on the way…”

“...Just so you know, um, we don’t even know where his head of operations is or where he is physically.” Dante reminded him.

“I had a feeling.” Luke shook his head… “Which is why we’re travelling to that mountain where you found the dimension travel device. There may be clues you missed while taking the machine!”

“I think we were more interested in getting out of there with the machinery before being caught…” Dante tried to explain.

“Anyway, how far away is it?”

“Um, about… seven hours.”

“Well.” Luke sighed frustratedly before kicking back, opening the armrest compartment and grabbing a tape, sliding it into the tape deck. “I guess we’ll have time to listen to some music, then-” He reached for rewind button but Dante pushed his hand away, rewinding until he hit a song he liked.

“Here’s Thriller.” Dante pulled his hand away to return back to the steering wheel.

“...If you get tired, please don’t hesitate to pull over so you’re not driving while half asleep…” Luke quietly tapped the end of his pen to the notepad to the beat.

“Will do.”

Once the album had ended, Luke noticed he was a bit peckish. He reached backwards to grab his pack from the backseat, unzipping it and grabbing himself a bit of chocolate that Hershel had left him in his bag. Dante and Luke were going to be stopping in a town for some takeout later, but he needed something small to satisfy his sweet tooth as well as to tide him over.

Dante glanced over as Luke unwrapped the little chocolate, seemingly thinking for a moment before bursting out in uncontrollable laughter.

“What?” Luke paused, suddenly rather… worried. What was Dante laughing about. “Did I do something?”

“No, no, no, oh my _god,_ that’s genius.” Dante continued to cackle. “Didn’t the professor leave those in your bag?”

“He did…” Luke confirmed quietly, before looking down at the Hershey’s Kiss he was holding, taking a second for it to register.

“Oh my _god_. I never-- I NEVER NOTICED THE WORDPLAY.” Luke suddenly realized and cackled uncontrollably. “I FEEL SO STUPID NOW.”

“You never noticed?!” 

“He’s been regularly leaving these in my briefcase when I go to work!! And I NEVER NOTICED THE JOKE!” Luke began to shout, suddenly laughing uncontrollably and breathlessly.

“Amazing.” Dante snorted.

Their laughter continued up basically until they reached the small town where they were going to grab dinner, where they managed to mostly halt their laughter up until they had to actually drag themselves into a pizzeria and had to try and look like they hadn’t been laughing for the past several minutes. It was incredibly difficult.

Once they’d had dinner, Luke had basically immediately passed out in the passenger seat. Now that the sky was dark and there wasn’t any music playing, Dante was more or less alone with his thoughts.

He had sort of given up on any dreams of being able to return into the arms of the handsome and kind Hershel Layton.

Deep down, he did still feel like a shorter than average English teenager named Luke Triton rather than a 23 year old borderline revolutionary named Dante Inferno. He regularly remembered the time he rushed to the mailbox to grab his letter from the professor. The last time there had been a letter waiting for him.

He’d ran upstairs and opened it on his bed, pulling out the several sheets of paper and reading over the beautifully written cursive. His letters were usually chatty rather than the usual formal that the professor wrote to other people, and Dante had appreciated that. Over the years the professor had been able to be more verbally affectionate, squeezing his hand and giving him an “I love you”. Three words that the world to him. Although he couldn’t have his hand squeezed anymore, he could still read those beautiful words.

The professor’s last letter had been something about the cafe he went to last week and the lovely muffin he’d gotten. 

And of course, Dante had eagerly written his response.

...

No response.

He sent another letter.

No response.

…

Dante could sense his late night sad thoughts coming on. Actually, no, they were already here. His eyelids were getting droopy and it was getting hard to concentrate on the road, so he decided to just pull over to the side of the empty road for the night.

He undid his seatbelt so he could sleep a bit more comfortably, his thoughts now swirling into the darkness as sleep came to claim him.

_Do you still miss me, wherever you are?_

\--

By the time Luke’s eyes slowly opened in the morning, he noticed Dante was asleep, quietly thanking his stars that Dante hadn’t decided to keep driving through exhaustion or anything. The road was silent and the paddocks stretched out to the endless distance, although he could see mountains in the difference. Perhaps one of those mountains was where Dante and his group had found that machine.

He did quietly feel pangs in his heart of missing Hershel. It had only been around 24 hours but if either he or Hershel were away somewhere for a while there was often a phone in their hotel room where they could call home. Luke appreciated hearing the dulcet soft tones of his partner’s voice down the phone line or from behind when receiving a warm hug. He briefly thought back to when Hershel had told him they were technically only metres away in some sort of scientific multiverse sense, but that wasn’t necessarily the same comfort as being able to call home.

Luke briefly glanced over to Dante fast asleep, arms folded loosely with his head against the window and felt pity. He’d missed Hershel very very much while living across an entire ocean in New York. The American lifestyle wasn’t for Luke, and he didn’t particularly get along with the kid at his new school. He often opted to sit with the birds while he ate lunch to talk to. They would chirp about the clouds and the worms they found today, or a cool stick. Luke would sometimes give them little pieces of bread and whistle so he could carry out a proper conversation.

His father was also rather pushy about Luke’s decision to pursue a degree in veterinary science, suggesting and pushing him to perhaps attend law school or ‘people medicine’. Or join the college sports team. 

By the time he’d finished his degree, he did seek out to move back in with Hershel. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.

Luke wasn’t particularly sure what had happened with his counterpart asleep on the window over there, but he did know that he had lost contact with the professor and made the decision to move back to England regardless. He could understand moving back here if only to get away from father, in all honesty. He did feel a bit selfish having a moment in the car after being separated after only 24 hours when he had his counterpart who had been separated for a good 10 years.

...But that just meant he had to keep going and fix this mess as soon as possible!

…

Once Dante had woken up. 

Luke was going to pounce on the man’s shoulder to wake him up before deciding that would make him mad and probably uncooperative. Luke decided to grab a muesli bar from his bag to munch on as a light breakfast, briefly thinking that they should’ve picked something up yesterday in that small town.

Dante was woken up by the rustling of Luke fishing around in his bag past the first aid, his eyes slowly opening as the car’s mirror also began to reflect some light into his eyes. He should’ve parked a bit differently.

“Good morning.” Luke spoke quietly and handed a muesli bar to Dante to wake him up. Dante groaned and tried to shut his eyes again, squeezing his eyes shut tighter to try and block out the sunlight.

Luke tutted. “Luke, the faster you wake up the faster we can get to the mountain and get a proper breakfast once we’ve searched the place.”

Dante groaned, deciding Luke had a point. That and Luke calling him by his actual name. “Fine, let’s go…” He grabbed the muesli bar, sitting himself up properly and turning the key in the ignition. Luke once again grabbed at Dante’s tape collection and ejected the tape already inside the deck, grabbing a random tape to play.

While Luke expected some funky beat to start playing, a bit of opera started up. A familiar tune he had in his vinyl collection back home, actually.

“Ah, I have this song on vinyl back home.” Luke smiled faintly as he laid back into the chair as Dante pulled out onto the road. His eyes drifted to the sunrise, golden skies and golden landscapes. Fitting.

“It’s a good song.” Dante concurred.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Luke and Dante drive, get themselves another meal since it's a long drive, and have Feelings for their respective Hershels
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Needles, kidnapping, alleyways, drinking, drugging

Three hours later, Luke was still flicking through Dante’s music collection to pass the time until some of the mountains they’d been seeing on the horizon were suddenly… Right There. They were in the mountain range now, and Luke’s eyes went up to a winding road going up a particular mountain with a snowy peak. The air felt still here. A gentle giant of rock, shaped entirely by the forces of the Earth moving within. How beautiful.

“Is this the mountain?” Luke asked as he put down the tapes, having some banger of a pop album going on in the background. The music was unfortunately harder to hear now over the constant rumble of the tires moving over the loose dirt road. Dante had slowed down the car as to not slip, but it didn’t prevent the music from being drowned out.

“Yep.” Dante gave a simple nod.

“How’d you find this place, anyway?”

“Me and my buds were on some road trip and noticed a lot of flashes of light from this mountain range over here and decided to investigate. Seriously, you could see it from a hundred miles away or something.”

“How long ago was this?”  
  
“Well. Last week. It took us a while to reassemble it…”

Up the winding road they went up until they reached a cave. Dante parked the car up next to the cave entrance and stopped the car. And then there was no sound but the wind whistling around the car.

“This is where we found the machine.” Dante carefully stepped out of the car. Although they were nowhere near any sort of cliff face, Luke couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious knowing they were on some kind of rock shelf. Regardless, the cave’s mouth was wide and apparently drilled out, judging by how… neat it all looked.

“Out here or-?”  
  


“In the cave.” 

\--

Luke was admittedly on edge as Dante pulled a flashlight to shine down the large cave. They had been walking for a couple of minutes… Although the ground was flat, the rest of the cave seemed to be some kind of drilled out arch shape. Regardless, Luke couldn’t help but feel there may be _someone_ here in the cave. He wasn’t sure who, but he was a bit concerned that there might be someone investigating the sudden removal of their likely very expensive dimension hopping machine. He was being careful to step quietly.

“Was the cave this deep when you got here?” Luke asked softly, his voice barely echoing.

“Yes, but truth be told we kind of barrelled down here in the car... It didn’t take more than a minute to get to the room at the end of the cave.”

“That sounds unsafe.”  
  
“Exactly why we’re walking this time.” Dante didn’t seem to care about the volume of his voice, even though Luke was taking careful quiet steps.

“Don’t you think there could be people here waiting for someone to come back?” Luke whispered. “...You know- to catch who stole their big machine?”

“We both know karate, me more than you but we both know it.” Dante assured. “Do you want to hold the flashlight? It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to get it out.”

“Sure.” Dante tossed it to Luke who caught it effortlessly, but as the light moved, Luke swore he… saw another shadow.

He took a moment to whip the flashlight back to see if someone was pursuing them. And the light shone to reveal - no one. He must be paranoid still.

Live sparking wires everywhere, control panels stripped bare of all their electronics and machinery, a buzzing in the air, broken glass on the floor from hanging ceiling fluorescent lights which had been smashed into little pieces. Luke took a moment to stare up at the ceiling’s framework to make sure there wasn’t anyone hiding or perched there. No one.

“You did a messy job taking the thing.” Luke murmured, honestly a bit too anxious to just step out into the room with countless live sparking wires on the ground and the like. 

“We wanted to get out before anyone could stop us…”  
  
“Was anyone here when you stole it?”

“Nope, not sure where they were…”

Luke briefly paused to think this over. But they’d seen flashing from a long way away - could someone have been using it? If so, then people would’ve been here, but where would those people have gone to? Did they all use the machine to go somewhere? Luke pulled out his notepad to jot all this down.

“There’s a bunch of floppy disks here.” Dante shone a light on a rack of floppies, all 3 1⁄2 inch. He was also on the other edge of the room across from countless sparking wires which Luke didn’t feel up to crossing.

“Are they labelled?!” Luke shouted over, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“No!”

Luke exhaled in annoyance, immediately thinking back to a time at work where he had to try and sort through a billion floppies to find where the patient registry database was. It had become a bit of an in-joke between him and Hershel. Mm. Hershel. “...Can you bring them over?”

“Well, okay…” Dante did his best to scoop them up to run back over.

“Great, now we just have to go to the un- wait, no.” Luke remembered he wouldn’t have access to the computer labs at Gressenheller like back home, quietly wondering if Gressenheller was still around in this universe. “Back to where you and your friends live? You have a computer, right?”

“No?” Dante shuffled awkwardly. “Where would we scratch up 3500 pounds?”

“Ah.” Luke blinked, realizing why they hadn’t taken the floppy disks in the first place. “...Well. We’re going to need to see what’s on those somehow…” He took a moment to think.

“I could just put them back…”

“No, these probably contain important data!” Luke assured. “Mm, we could try heading back to my London…”

“Oh, I forgot we could… do that.”

“And then we could get Hershel to help too!” Luke raised a finger triumphantly.

“I mean, we should probably scout out the place to see if there’s anything else we missed while we’re here.”

“Good point. Let’s do that.”

Luke had the courage to step over the live wires, doing his best to avoid them. His mind briefly went back to the shadows he swore moved. Surely nothing. His imagination had always been a bit overactive, even as an adult. 

He decided to just take the whole empty rack of floppies, although he also noticed some strange small metal canisters behind it, about the size of Luke’s palm. There were quite a few, a couple dozen just on that shelf alone. 

_“Stabilizers”_

Ah, must be some way to stabilize objects after being sent into another dimension. Luke thought back to when Dante had first showed up in his own dimension, vibrating and clearly not exactly attuned to the atomic structure of that universe. They seemed to be portable, too. Perfect. He unzipped his bag to put as many as he could carry in and rezipped it, heading back to Dante with the empty floppy rack in hand.

\--

By the time they had gotten back to London, it was night once again. Luke quietly counted the hours he’d been separated from Hershel as he wandered down the London streets. It was late at night and he’d decided he could go out for a pub crawl. He made it a tradition whenever he visited a place, and although Hershel opted to stay home as he didn’t drink, Luke always enjoyed the atmosphere of each and every place he visited.

This London nightlife had a distinctly different vibe to the one he knew. Bars didn’t seem to be as full, although people seemed to have dressed up in jackets for warmth rather than dressed up to pick up a partner or something like that. Luke was truthfully just seeking for a reasonably priced place where he could grab a nice cocktail. Dante had given a suggestion for a place down the road, but it seemed like a place that served cheap booze rather than a good ol’ well mixed cocktail.

Luke couldn’t help but feel he was being tailed on these streets. Dim and filled with potholes left and right. Quite a few streetlamps just didn’t work and made it a bit hard to see where he was walking. He tried to keep himself together by reminding himself his imagination just tended to be overactive once more and decided to head into the next pub he found.

It was just a small but cozy corner pub. Not many people, rather quiet but rather fancy (read:clean) for a bar _._ Luke had a thought that he’d returned to his bougie roots like in Misthallery. Well, compared to Dante, he was rather… _bougie_. That was a weird thought. Ah well.

Luke decided to not stick around for very long after he ordered himself a cheap cocktail and quickly drank it down. He wanted to get back to that weird place where Dante and his friends had holed themselves up so they could use the dimension travel pad they stole. Mm. It’d be nice to actually surprise Hershel by showing up in the morning. Maybe he’d cook him a surprise breakfast. 

Luke was too busy planning what to cook, wandering back to a main street in a dark patch of the alley when he suddenly got smacked in the back of the head. The shock barely registered before he had hit the ground cold.

\--

Luke came to finding his hands bound. They were sore and the ropes were cutting into his wrists. His mildly inebriated thoughts quickly asked where you even bought ropes, but then he looked up to find himself in a dank and dirty room. He was tied to a chair. Shit. Where was he? And more importantly, why?

He briefly wished there was some quick-easy way to get out of bindings like in the movies, but apparently not. His ankles were also tied, and once again, seemingly no quick or easy way to get out of them. The door then opened, causing Luke to look up and squint into the light. A silhouette moved into the room. It was too dark to make out any specific facial features. The door closed and they were now in the dark again.

“We found Luke Triton, after all this time-- and he’s on a pub crawl?” A gruff voice in the dark. Familiar.

_Well. Giving out my name was a great idea._

Luke cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “Sir? Could I get a rundown on why am I here? I have places to be… And could I know your name?”

“We are the _police._ And I’m the one asking questions, boy.”

Luke quietly noted to himself that he was being called boy, despite being a 23 year old grown adult. 

“Do you know me?” Luke asked.

“Once again, I am the one asking questions. Do you know anything about the location of Professor Hershel Layton?”

Luke briefly thought for a second, before he heard the tapping of his interrogator’s foot. “What do you already know about me? Why did you choose to kidnap me of all people?”

“Well…” The voice murmured. “You were placed into the custody of Mr. Layton when you were age 10 after your father Mr. Triton thought it would be beneficial for you to get into a school in London. Between the ages of 10 and 13 you solved various mysteries with Mr. Layton when you were on school holiday or over the weekends. At age 13 and a half Mr. Layton renounced custody back to Mr. Triton as you moved with your parents to New York.”

“And?”

“And at age 19 you immigrated back to England, and from there your record goes blank. Is that correct?”

“Yes, that is all correct.”

“I suspect you are aware of the location of Hershel Layton and everyone who he took with him.”

“I…” Luke wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, until something came to his mind. The police were under Hershel’s control, weren’t they? “You don’t know where he is?”

A slam against the wall. “We are going to make you answer our questions, whether you like it or not. If you don’t want to answer we WILL make you. Where is Hershel Layton?”

“I-- I don’t know.”

Luke had his arm grabbed and suddenly he felt a sharp prick on his arm, his eyes flicking down to see a needle. A syringe. _Shit._ Probably some kind of truth serum? They wouldn’t kill him. It had to be a truth serum of sorts. 

It occurred to him he probably needed to get his interrogator out as soon as possible. 

“Fine, fine…” Luke put on his best worried voice. “I don’t know where Hers-- _Layton_ is, but I know… I know where people are who work with him.”

“So you’re working with Hershel Layton?” 

“I’m lower in his ranks.” Luke was beginning to feel his head starting to spin.

“Where can I find these people?”  
  


“Th-third street… Left of Berkley Avenue. Office bbbuilding. Bring them heeere, so, so…”

“I suppose I can get more out of multiple people.”

And with that, the man left to leave Luke with a spinning head and his brain now beginning to interpret the darkness as some kind of swirling black slime engulfing him.

\--

Dante was carefully programming the dimensional jumping pad to try and get them back to his counterpart’s home dimension. He did find a bit of comfort in seeing the face of _a_ Professor Layton, even if it wasn’t necessarily _his_ Professor Layton. He was still handsome and just as kind as he’d remembered him. Even if seeing him without his hat was a bit disorientating… It would be nice to sit down and have a talk with him.

He was getting a bit worried about Luke, though. He’d suggested him a nice cheap pub down the road so he could get back quick, but it seemed like Luke would’ve preferred to go on a somewhat longer trip to get something nice. He could get behind that. He’d go pub crawling if he had the time or the energy… 

All of his friends were asleep by now. His ears pricked up as there was a knock on the door. That must be his friend Nathan at the door. He decided to temporarily abandon the control panel to go answer the front door.

He opened the door expecting to see his friend Nathan but came face to face the towering figure of Inspector Chelmey. 

“Inspector Chelmey, public inspector for the government of the United Kingdom. Can I ask your name?”

“D...Dante Inferno.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

“Can I ask why?” Dante raised an eyebrow, quietly tucking his hands behind his back.

“Luke Triton sent us here. Apparently you have some connections to Hershel Layton.”

Dante immediately wondered just why Luke decided to send this man to the doorstep of his comrade’s centre of operations. But… Luke was smart. He was sure he had a plan or something.

“...Alright.” Dante nodded.

“That’s a good lad.”

The drive was relatively short, to a small run down building similar to Dante’s own house/centre of operations… Dante supposed that what remained of the old government didn’t necessarily have many resources considering the police stations had all been removed.

As Chelmey pulled the car over, Dante took a deep breath. He knew he might have to get a bit violent and mentally prepped himself to chop someone if needed. He stepped out of the car into a puddle and was lead inside the building, just a small run down old office building, not much. 

“You understand I will be asking you questions as well, yes?” Chelmey spoke gruffly as he walked through the hallways with Dante in tow.

“I understand. Where’s Luke Triton, anyway?”

“I had to inject some truth serum into his arm. He’s probably not in much of a state to talk.”

Dante had the feeling Luke had directed Chelmey to Dante to get him out of whatever weird situation he was in.

Chelmey stopped at a small closet, opening the door. “He’s right-” 

He was interrupted by Dante punching the side of his head with an expert right hook.

Dante could now see Luke unconscious, tied to a chair, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth, and a small prick of blood on one of his arms, the sleeves of his jacket having been rolled up.

_Oof._

Dante didn’t hesitate to try and untie Luke’s bonds - he’d learned how to efficiently untie people with his current line of work, although that still left him unconscious.

“...Luke.” Dante lightly slapped his cheek.

Luke was jolted awake from the slap, a hand immediately going to his cheek, then his head. “...Owwwww…”

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Dante grabbed Luke’s arm to pull him up.

“Whhere are we going noooow??” Luke was still clearly dazed, his eyes somewhat glazed from whatever Chelmey injected into his arm. Truth serums were mostly psychoactive substances, Dante had learned this from some of his friends, and Luke was probably going to be high for a while.

As Luke was pulled out, he looked over to the unconscious Chelmey. “Oohh. Chelmey. Haven’t-- seen him in ages…”

“I hoped I wouldn’t see him again, truthfully.” Dante commented as he tried to remember the office layout to find an exit.

“Rrr- remember when heee was suspicious of Hershel keeping me arrround?? Ahaaa…” Luke slurred, the alcohol clearly mixing with whatever he’d gotten injected into his arm. “Heee must’ve f-figured out meee and Hershelll were in a relationsship, but he didn’ttt even do anythiiiing…”

“Ah, I remember that…”

“He must be reaaaally bad at his jobbb…”

“...Extremely.”

Dante pulled the poor Luke through the streets by the wrist back to his hideout, hoping no one had decided to fiddle with the dimension travel machine while he was gone for those 15 minutes. Nathan liked to fiddle with it…


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Luke and Dante arrive in the cavern where Dante and co stole the dimension jumping pad, Luke swears he's being followed and/or watched but decides to take a rack of floppy drives that they could look at in Gressenheller back home in Luke's dimension. While on a pub crawl, he is knocked out and taken to a chamber to be interrogated by Chelmey on the location of Hershel Layton, where he learns the government is not aware of his location. Luke manages to trick Chelmey into getting Dante to rescue him, and he has to recover from the effects of being drugged.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: hangovers

Hershel Layton was making himself a cup of tea. Luke had left two mornings ago, two lonely nights since then. He briefly wondered if Luke was having a good time over in that other dimension with that other Luke. Ah, nice thoughts.

He had finally finished piecing together one of the vases that Other Luke had smashed. Even managed to hide most of the cracks using the technique he’d used. Quite an interesting learning experience, actually. He still had several more to fix, but now that he’d finished one vase he felt somewhat accomplished. So it was possible!

It was getting late and he decided to grab himself some herbal tea. Hershel was missing Luke, admittedly, but he had been gone for longer. But he’d also been able to call up when he was away. He sighed as he put some water on to boil. Luke often brewed his tea for him when he was busy. 

All of a sudden, a knock at the door.

Hershel went to open the door, proceeding to see Luke and Other Luke, his Luke looking rather out of it with glazed eyes, other Luke struggling to keep him from collapsing.

“Help.” Other Luke blinked.

“Hershellll?” Luke’s eyes went up to his partner, his eyes lighting up immediately.

“Someone injected truth serum into his arm.” Other Luke briefly explained, immediately passing Luke into his arms so he didn’t have to hold his counterpart anymore.

“Ah.” Hershel struggled a bit with Luke suddenly limp against him, watching Other Luke just walk past him. Luke was a good inch taller than Hershel, although Hershel managed to pull the man over to the couch, laying him down where he immediately blanked out. Hershel bit his lip, nervously wondering if he was alright.

“He’ll be alright, he’s just a bit dazed.” Other Luke assured the professor.

Hershel slid Luke’s backpack off to make him more comfortable, noticing it had increased in weight. He unzipped it to find a couple of weird canister things…

“What are these?”

“Oh, they’re like…” Other Luke tried to figure out an explanation. “Atomic stabilizers. It means I’m not vibrating here anymore.”

“Ah, that’s helpful.” Hershel got that glint in his eyes when he found something interesting. “...Seeing as you and my Luke are back here, I’m assuming your adventure is over, yes?”

“Well, no.” Other Luke murmured. “...We have some floppy disks that needed to be checked out. We’re still a long way off finding my Hershel.”

“Ah. So the adventure continues.” Hershel nodded lightly, before looking back down at Luke. Drool was beginning to drip from the corner of his mouth. “Has Luke eaten dinner? Do you think he’ll wake up anytime soon?”

“He… hasn’t eaten, from my knowledge, and I’m pretty sure he’ll wake up soon.”

“I’ll have to heat something up for him once he wakes up…”

Other Luke remained silent for a moment as the professor looked over his own Luke, sighing.

“Is there anywhere that I could stay for the night? It’s late…” Other Luke asked quietly.

“I have a couch I’ve set up for naps in my study over there. It has a blanket and a pillow.” Hershel offered, glancing back over to Other Luke. “I could get you some herbal tea as well, if you’d like.”

“Oh... Yes please, um, thank you.” Other Luke hastily thanked him and went down a corridor to the study. 

Hershel sighed and took Luke’s hat off his head to plant a kiss in his hair before going to grab Luke some dinner. He had some canned soup in the pantry which he pulled open by the tab, and poured into a small saucepan to heat. Quick and easy, and good for people who had been drugged and was now unconscious.

He grabbed an herbal teabag while waiting for the soup to heat up. The Other Luke clearly had gone through a lot with whatever happened to his Luke, and his life seemed hard enough from the little he’d heard of the other London.

He poured some water into the teacup he’d gotten and went to carry it into his study where the other Luke was resting, only to open the door and see him fast asleep curled up on the couch, having pulled the blanket over himself and innocently making little snoozing noises. 

Hershel chuckled faintly and went to place the teacup on the small table in front of the sofa, going back outside and quietly closing the door as to not wake him. When he came back into the living room he saw Luke had awoken again and was rubbing his head…

“Ah, Luke…” Hershel hurried over to take his hand to try and gauge what had happened.

“Her...shellll…” Luke’s glazed eyes met Hershel’s, his head bobbing to the side slightly as they did.

“How does your head feel?”

“It ‘urts.”

“You sound somewhat drunk as well. Did you go for the usual pub crawl you do when visiting places…?”

“OHH, abssssolutely.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Now. Who injected you with-” He briefly paused for a second and mentally prayed that the needle was sterilized.

“Innnspector Chelmey.” 

“Mmm.” Hershel trusted the inspector to not shove used needles into people’s arm, even if he disliked the man quite a bit. “I haven’t seen Chelmey in a long time, truthfully…”

“...I’m hungryy.” Luke rubbed his head.

“Ah, your soup should be done. I’ll fetc-” Hershel was getting up when Luke suddenly grabbed his shirt, pulling him down to hold him tight.

“Don’t gooo… I missed you…” Luke basically crushed him in a tight embrace.

“Aha… Luke--”

Luke pressed a sloppy kiss to his cheek. Hershel chuckled and kissed his partner’s cheek if only to return the affection, Luke now allowing him to pull away. Hershel hurried over to the stove to grab a bowl, wondering if poor Luke was able to feed himself.

\--

Hershel awoke slowly in the morning. 9:23am. The blankets were warm and the usual bustle of the city outside had been diminished. Just a lazy Saturday morning. Nowhere he needed to be, plenty of time to just unwind from the day. He looked over next to him to see Luke curled up on his side, still fast asleep, hair disheveled… Beautiful. It was nice to see him like this. He decided to just shut his eyes and try to get back to sleep.

...Until he heard a groan from Luke.

Hershel reopened his eyes, seeing Luke having buried his face in his hands. “Ughhh…”

“Good morning.” Hershel greeted quietly.

“My head… Oh god.”

“Hungover?”

Luke just groaned in response, pushing his face into the pillow. “I want to die…”

“I understand that.” Hershel chuckled, sitting up. This was a rare sight to see Luke hungover - he did drink occasionally, and even more occasionally he’d do his tourism pub crawls, but he had learned how to help his partner when this happened. “I’ll fetch you some painkillers and water.”

As Hershel slid his feet into some slippers, he shuffled out of their bedroom to the medicine cabinet, to grab Luke a nice iced glass of water and the painkillers he needed. He’d probably make Luke some breakfast as well. Eating was important with a hangover! He took the glass of water back to Luke, looking at the poor man and grabbing a thick pillow to prop him up with.

“Here.” Hershel dropped the medication into Luke’s open palm and passed the glass into his other hand. “Would you like me to cook you breakfast?”

“...Ah-” Luke looked up slowly. “I-- I wanted to make… you breakfast… last night…”

“You can do that later, can’t you?” Hershel smiled faintly. “You need to rest up today. I don’t know what you’ve been doing in the other dimension but if you had, err, Inspector Chelmey inject you with truth serum while you were already tipsy…”

“It’s been tiring.” Luke chuckled as he popped the painkillers into his mouth and took a sip of the water Hershel had given him. His head was still pounding but he hoped these would make them better.

Hershel hurried back to the kitchen to grab some eggs, mushrooms, and a bit of spinach to fry up. He cut the mushrooms up and cracked four eggs into one frying pan, then his eyes went over to the closed study door, remembering there was another Luke to take care of. He would probably like a fried breakfast, even if he wasn’t hungover. He got another frying pan to drop the mushrooms and spinach in, hoping the other Luke had the same tastes as his own Luke.

He popped some toast in a small toaster and put some water in the kettle to boil, grabbing some good ol’ English Breakfast tea to put in two teacups, one for Luke, the other for Other Luke. 

The eggs and mushrooms were all done rather quickly, and so was the toast. Hershel wasn’t exactly the best at plating up food, but he got two large plates - put the toast down, and carefully slid two eggs onto each plate, and split the mushrooms and spinach equally. His plating was rather messy, but that didn’t particularly matter.

Hershel got some cutlery and carried the plate into their room. Luke was leaning against the large pillow, his face somewhat scrunched up from the pain. His fingers were grabbing the blanket tensely.

“Here’s your breakfast.” Hershel carefully placed the plate into Luke’s lap, watching the man’s eyes flick open to see the bountiful plate which had been placed in front of him.

“Ah…” A thankful and relieved look came over Luke’s face. “Thank you, Hersh…”

“Anything for you.” Hershel leaned over to kiss his forehead, drawing a giggle from Luke. “I’ll get you your tea in a moment-”

“I’d prefer more water, please.” Luke croaked, although he began to messily tuck in. Hershel nodded and went to refill Luke’s glass of water, briefly wondering if the other Luke would like tea as well.

After Luke had a full glass of water again, Hershel carried the other plate to the study door, knocking.

“Luke? May I come in?” 

“Go ahead…”

Hershel opened the door a crack before coming in, holding the plate of the lovingly cooked breakfast. Other Luke’s bleached hair with the pink tips was just as disheveled, his eyes squinting at the light from the door. He was still under the blanket.

“Good morning. I made both you and my Luke breakfast.” Hershel placed the plate down on the small table, noticing the teacup from the previous night had been untouched. He decided to pick it up to empty it in the kitchen.

“Oh…” Other Luke sat up, pushing the blanket off himself, looking over the plate with a bit of surprise. “...Th-thank you.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Hershel offered with a faint smile. “I noticed the tea I made you last night went untouched.”

“...I… just passed out.” Other Luke admitted, pulling the plate into his lap. “And, yes, more tea would be nice…” 

Hershel took notice of how quietly grateful the man was. A shy look in his eyes, looking down to the food. He looked sad, somehow. How long since he’d been shown affection, the professor wondered. 

He quietly left the room to grab one of the cups, pouring some boiling water into it. The teabag was already there. Hershel knew that his Luke liked tea with a bit of milk and sugar, so he grabbed the milk and a small teaspoon. Once the tea had brewed, he carefully scooped out the teabag, pouring in a little splash of milk, and dumping in a spoonful of sugar. Stir.

When he returned to the study, Other Luke was seemingly tucking into those eggs. Hershel placed the teacup down.

“I… thought you should also know that my Luke is rather hungover and probably will be out of commission for the day.” Hershel informed him as Other Luke took the teacup to sip from.

“Would you mind if I use the computer labs at Gressenheller?” Other Luke asked, looking up from his breakfast. “I need to look at the floppy drives me and other Luke found.”

“I could drive you, if you’d like. I have some things to pick up at some point during the day…”

“Would you mind helping me out?” Other Luke looked up from his tea. “The disks may contain some kind of puzzle encryption…”

“I’m sure Luke Triton would be able to crack a bit of puzzle encryption, can’t he?” Hershel spoke with a faint smile. “I have faith that you should be able to crack it.”

“Ah. Thank you…” 

“I do have some things to pick up at Gressenheller, though…” Hershel reached to stroke his chin thoughtfully. “If you needed any help I’d be willing to assist.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Hershel finds both Lukes on his doorstep once again and decides to take care of them as well as decide next steps.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: awkward questioning

Dante stared out the window, amazed to see the… peacefulness of this London. The sky was still grey, but there was less smog. The professor had told Dante he should call him Hershel as well, and he was just mulling the name over in his head. Hershel was a lovely name. Soft and refined. But he had a burning question in his mind as the professor quietly hummed a tune. The question had remained unanswered for years and he was desperate to know.

“Pr- Hershel?”

“Yes…?”

“Did you fuck Clive Dove?”

“... Excuse me?” Hershel looked over, giving him a bit of a bewildered expression.

“...I’m sorry to just- spring that on you. I’m curious.”

“No, no, my Luke asked that question a couple of years back too.” Hershel chuckled, shaking his head.

“Sooo…”

“...He was incredibly convincing as a ‘Future Luke’.” Hershel laughed defeatedly.

“So you DID fuck Clive Dove!” Dante suddenly raised his voice, before breaking out into hysterical laughter. “Oh my god…”

Hershel seemed to have gone quiet out of shame for several seconds, until Dante could finally calm himself.

“Ah, I was always curious. Sorry for asking you that, I haven’t been able to ask my own Hershel.” 

“I was more thinking about how Dove managed to stalk me and Luke for a worryingly long time, truthfully.” Hershel murmured. “I still don’t know just how much he knew, and yet he decided to use what information he’d gathered about me and Luke not to publish a bombshell of a story, but rather put on some kind of gigantic… puzzle… involving the life Prime Minister, purely for me to solve.”

“Do you think Clive managed to accurately figure out how your Luke acts?”

“Oh, no, he just extrapolated from what he saw. My Luke is rather polite but he isn’t what I’d call a gentleman, if that makes sense… Clive was always extremely polite and gentlemanly."

“I remember doing my damn best to not look like Clive when I hit 15 and started actually looking like an adult…” Dante murmured. 

“Aha, my Luke too…” Hershel chuckled.

Dante went quiet for a moment to think when he noticed they’d made it to Gressenheller. He felt a tinge of nostalgia as Hershel parked his car just outside the university, stopping the car.

“I’ll show you where the computer labs are.” Hershel and Dante both hopped out of the car, Hershel leading the way.

The university was quiet today, given it was a Saturday. A couple of staff were around, but other than that it was rather mellow.

“Have you booted a floppy disk before? I could help you.” Hershel offered, moving up some stairs to lead Dante to the computer labs.

“Oh, I’m sure I can figure it out…”

\--

Dante did indeed struggle a bit to actually boot the floppy disk. He navigated to the directory where it was located only to find it had some kind of heavy puzzle encryption. Math equations, primarily. Although the amount of numbers was beginning to hurt his brain. 

He slumped over the desk, switching off the computer to eject the current floppy disk, placing another one in the slot and rebooting. Yet another screen of equations came up, completely different from the last one. Only one person would have gone through the ridiculous effort to put all these puzzles in front of whatever was on these disks - clearly, Hershel Layton. Only one bastard could be this paranoid.

Dante leaned close to the screen to try and unravel the equations, trying to make out where it actually began and where it ended, pressing up and down on the arrow keys. Endless numbers and symbols to stand in for mathematical factors-

He threw his hands up and decided to just go find Hershel.

Dante knocked on the door of the professor’s office, having remembered easily where it was.

“Hershel…”

“Other Luke?”

“I think your… other self put a ridiculous amount of puzzle encryption on those floppies.”

The door opened, a small smile coming to Hershel’s face. He had a couple of papers tucked under his arm. “Well then, if you can’t solve a puzzle… Then I’ll be happy to tackle it.”

Dante felt a smile coming to his face. This was a nice nostalgic feeling he hadn’t gotten to feel in a while. Hershel seemingly struggled to keep those papers together under his arm.

“I’ll hold those papers for y-”

“No, no, it’ll be fine.” Hershel assured Dante as he tried to walk a bit faster to get to the labs before the papers fell, although he was clearly not going to make it.

“Seriously, let me carry those.” Dante stopped Hershel by tapping his shoulders from behind and grabbing the stack of papers. “Here you go.”

“...Thank you.” Hershel conceded with a smile. “Just how… difficult are the puzzles?”

“Long algebra, parabolas…” Dante mumbled, actually trying to remember just what he saw on the screen. A lot of the equation had to be displayed on odd ways, exponents being displayed like “12^9” rather than “12 9 ” like they  _ should be. _

“Mm.”

\--

Dante had gotten Hershel a couple empty sheets of paper so he could actually write down his workings and sketch out parabolas and the like so he wasn’t quietly doodling on marking paper absentmindedly. The clock was ticking away, 3:21pm and it seems like Hershel had forgotten to eat anything once again. Dante had been considering going out and grabbing the professor something from the cafe down the road he’d heard about. Until a thought emerged that he needed an answer to desperately.

“Ah!” Dante suddenly spoke up.

“Hmm?”

“What happened to Flora? I mean, you adopted her, didn’t you?”

Hershel sighed for a moment, putting the pen down to think for a moment. “What do you want to know?”

“...Why didn’t she live with you and your Luke? Why’d you adopt her in the first place, anyway? A...assuming you didn’t live together?”

Hershel lightly tapped his fingers on the table, exhaling. “...Well. The Golden Apple mystery was seemingly meant to find her someone to marry her, rather than to get her a mentor…”

Dante remained silent.

“...I decided to adopt her so I could enrol her in a good boarding school. She was a bright spark, even back then. No kid should be getting married at such a young age. I wanted to keep my distance for… obvious reasons. I wanted to keep her away from worse people than me, I suppose…”

“W...where is she now?”

“She’s working as a nurse somewhere in Manchester. I do send her letters occasionally, but I don’t think she’s all that interested in any kind of connection. I wasn’t really a father to her in any sense.”

“Would you like to have been?”

“Absolutely, but I don’t think I was or ever will be capable of that.” Hershel sighed. 

Dante leaned back in the chair he was in to think for a moment.

“Would… uh, if you had to flee the country, where would you go to?”

“Rural France, probably.” Hershel mumbled, still clearly deep in thought. He’d paused the equations, although it did seem like he was making headway.

“...Would you like me to grab you something to eat? I saw a cafe down the road.” 

“Yes, please, that’d be nice…”

“Anything in particular? I could get you some tea from the staff room…”

“Just whatever sandwich is vegetarian and cheapest.” Hershel tapped his pen absentmindedly on the desk. “...Thank you. I’ll pay you back-”

“No, no, you don’t have to…”

“I insist.”

\--

By the time Dante returned, he had a little sandwich in a bag and a mug of tea for Hershel, which he’d carried into the labs, to see Hershel pushing the up and down arrow keys, peering at the screen.

“I cracked the encryption.” Hershel announced as Dante got closer.

“You did?! What’s on it?”

“Coordinates, primarily.” Hershel pulled the chair next to him aside so Dante could sit down and see what was on the screen.

Listed in black and white text were simple latitude and longitude coordinates. About 15, but below that, hideously long strings of numbers with exponents on the end.

“I’m not sure about these ones, but from the numbers above I would guess they are also coordinates of a sort.” Hershel pointed to where each coordinate ended to go into the next one, large blocks of numbers on the screen.

“So. These floppy disks contain… coordinates.” Dante leaned back to try and decipher what they could exactly mean. “There’s… not much we can actually draw from this.”

“Hm. They could be a log of tried coordinates, coordinates to check, or just a string or randomly generated numbers.” Hershel murmured. “A coordinates generator?”

“I think we should focus on the higher up coordinates first? The shorter ones. We could try to pinpoint them to maps…” Dante tapped the up arrow to bring up the regular latitude and longitude coordinates.

“Ah. That’s a good idea.” Hershel took the notepad. “Let me jot them down.”

“Do you think your Luke might be a bit upset we left him alone all day?”

“He might be. He  _ is  _ rather clingy…”

“We should get back to him quickly, then.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Dante has a heart to heart with Luke's version of Hershel as they crack the floppy drives and discuss Flora.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: discussion of HIV and AIDS and needles

Night had fallen and Luke was finally able to shake off his hangover. He’d been having a bit of an anxiety attack all day about the fact he’d had a needle stuck in his arm in a dark room from a shady version of Inspector Chelmey. Surely the man had sterilized the needles? God, he hoped. Shit. Shiiit. 

Luke had made himself a cup of sweet tea. Even as an adult he’d kept his taste for sweet teas, although he often did enjoy a smokier tea before bed. Sweet teas tended to suppress any anxiety, so here he was.

The door opened, Hershel and Dante both entering. Hershel seemed a bit tired, but Dante was still energized.

“You’re back…” Luke’s eyes went to the two as he knocked back a bit of the tea he’d made.

“We cracked one of the floppies.” Dante raised the disk with a faint smile.

“Oh? What does it have?” Luke forced a smile through his anxiety. Hershel noticed.

“C...coordinates.” Dante shrugged. “Probably to use with the dimension jumping pad.”

“I suppose that’s helpful, then.” Luke murmured, looking down into his cup.

“Other Luke thought we could plot the coordinates on a map to see where they go.” Hershel spoke aloud.

“How about you two can do that and I can cook dinner for all of us?” Luke suggested, a faint crack of a smile forced onto his face.

Hershel gave him a bit of a look, as if being able to read his anxious racing thoughts. “I can see you’re a bit anxious, I could cook dinner if you’d like.”

“No, no, you cooked me breakfast!” Luke shook his head. “I can do it.”

“Please, Luke, take your time to relax. You’ve had a hard couple of days.”

“Hershel, I c-”

Dante interrupted by clicking his tongue. “I’m going to need something to eat, too, you know-”

“I don’t know if we have enough food in the pantry to feed all three of us, actually.” Luke murmured… “I mean. Yesterday was grocery day but, yknow. Other dimension, and you’re busy on that day, and…”

“You usually eat enough for two people, if we split that between you and the Other Luke…” Hershel thought aloud.

“You’re forgetting that Dante over there is me, which means we’d need enough to feed five normal people.”

Hershel suddenly remembered that and chuckled a bit. “Ah, well… Takeout, then?”

\--

Hershel was still… mentally recovering from the past few days. Two Lukes was all fine and dandy, but one of them was clearly busy doing some soul searching and was still being a bit overly polite towards him. It was interesting to watch, although he was unsure whether the man actually wanted any kind of comfort or affection. He did have pretty eyes…

He already had a shower and had gotten dressed into his pyjamas. Other Luke had set himself up in the study and was either reading through his collections of books or was fast asleep. Hershel was going to brush his teeth before bed and found Luke in front of the mirror, combing his hair as he usually did before bed.

Luke’s brow was somewhat raised, his eyes somewhat widened. Lines of worry on his face. Hershel had noticed, the slight tremble in his partner’s hand as he ran the comb through his fringe.

“You’re anxious.” Hershel murmured as he approached the man to look beside him in the mirror.

“...I am.” Luke replied.

“Is it about the needle still?” Hershel asked softly, his dulcet tones as comforting as always.

“Mm.” Luke gave a little nonspecific noise, but Hershel recognized it as confirmation.

“I can book in an emergency appointment for you tomorrow to get you tested.” Hershel put his hand over Luke’s and briefly rubbed his knuckles with his thumb.

“Can’t wait for all the invasive questions.” Luke laughed defeatedly. 

Hershel didn’t reply and just wrapped his arms around him to squeeze him tight. He could feel Luke’s heartbeat was somewhat quicker than usual. He briefly pondered on the times many many years ago when often Luke was the one who would talk him down from his anxieties.

Luke insisted on being held that night. He had managed to shut his eyes and curl up, and Hershel was holding him close and tight. As requested. 

“I was thinking I could come to the alternate dimension when you and the other Luke was feeling up to going back.” Hershel murmured as he fiddled and played with his partner’s hair.

“Are you sure?” Luke’s eyes flicked open, staring up into Hershel’s in the dark. “Well, I got kidnapped for giving out my actual… name.”

“And Other Luke’s gotten by calling himself Dante with bleached hair, hm?” Hershel pointed out with a small smile. “I could put together a disguise of sorts.”

“What were you thinking?”

“Sunglasses and something… more casual than what I usually wear.” Hershel thought aloud.

“They’re probably on the lookout for a short man wearing a giant top hat and some kind of suit…” Luke mumbled.

“So they won’t be looking for a shorter man with no tophat and sunglasses with a casual outfit.” Hershel followed his logic through.

“Won’t you need another name to go by?” Luke commented. “Something like…  _ Dante. _ ”

“I could not go by a name like  _ Dante Inferno. _ ” Hershel repeated the name and tried to hide a grin. “A regular name is just fine…”

“Dante Inferno’s a cool name…” 

“Well. I suppose another version of you did come up with the name.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Hershel and Dante return home to discuss what they found on the floppy disks, Luke and Hershel snuggle it out
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Bad codenames

“You look terrible.”

Dante had found Hershel’s ‘disguise’ was sunglasses, a scarf, a denim jacket, jeans, a very casual look, but judging by the fact he had paired denim jeans with a denim jacket, he had no idea how to actually dress casually. And he wasn’t even willing to dye or bleach his hair. He didn’t even want to commit! Coward.

“I… don’t know how fashion works.” Hershel admitted, looking at himself in the mirror and taking the sunglasses off. He’d borrowed most of these from Luke, truth be told, but he didn’t know how to match and pair it all together.

“Don’t match denim with denim!” Dante scolded. “Do you have anything in your wardrobe besides heavy coats and turtlenecks?”

“Me and my Luke share a wardrobe, so...”

“God I wish that were me.” Dante exhaled. “I think you’d be fine if you just put on some formal black pants and got a good codename. Did you have anything in mind?”   
  


“I always thought I looked like a ‘Basil’...” Hershel spoke, watching Dante go through his wardrobe with great enthusiasm.

“Basil’s a good name… Last name?”

Hershel didn’t respond, realizing he had neglected to choose a last name. “H… Herb?”

“You can’t go by ‘Basil Herb’!”

“Your name is Dante Inferno…” 

Dante paused for a moment, realizing that was indeed a bit of a stupid name. “I… chose it when I was 19, and, well… Fine, Basil Herb is just fine.”

Hershel smiled until Dante grabbed some formal black pants from the closet, passing them to him. 

“You did hear that my Luke is going to stay here seeing as he went to get that test done, hm? He needs to… recover from being kidnapped and jabbed with a needle.” Hershel quietly informed Dante.

“Oh. So just you and me then?” Dante blinked.

“For now. Until Luke’s feeling more up to it, I suppose.” Hershel shrugged.

Dante nodded faintly. “What were you thinking of doing, anyway?”

“I was hoping to perhaps try some of the local coordinates on we found on that floppy drive.” Hershel explained. “And you could try some of them as well to save time.”

“How do you know we won’t just… pop directly into some bunker where the other you is hiding?” Dante murmured.

“Well, I suppose then we will have found him.” Hershel chuckled. 

\--

Hershel awkwardly pushed the sunglasses up his nose absentmindedly as he leaned over the control panel of the dimension jumping pad, fumbling with a sheet of paper which he’d written the shorter xy coordinates down on. 

“You do realize if people see you, they’ll try to guillotine you on the spot?” Dante commented, having closed the door and locked it. He was hovering behind Hershel as he carefully input those coordinates.

“I understand that.” Hershel’s hand hovered over a dial. He had strapped a recall device to his left forearm and had a bag with a couple of stabilizer canisters, in case these coordinates whipped him into another dimension. The recall device would take him home rather than to this dimension, but that was something he could cope with. He finished inputting the coordinates and messing with the dials, watching the jump pad flicker to life.

“What coordinates are those?” Dante asked as Hershel began to walk down the stairs.

“I just randomly selected whatever felt best from the list.” Hershel explained, feeling a tinge of anxiety as he actually stared at the moving electricity and the waving energy. 

“What’s your goal, anyway? Do you have anything you wanted to investigate here?” Dante leaned over the control panel. “I could go fetch Luke later once he’s done with his test.”

“I heard from Luke that this place is being ruled by this dimension’s version of me, correct?” Hershel called up.

“Yes, that’s correct…”

“I struggle… to believe that I could ever stoop so low, truth be told.” Hershel stroked his chin. “I have doubts that I could be behind all of this, and I think you might have made some… false assumptions. Luke was being interrogated by the police and even they didn’t seem to know anything about me.”

“Huh-?” Dante hadn’t heard this. “...Then- who’s giving commands to the police?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to find that out.” Hershel nodded. “...Also, your friend Lyall being stabbed for seemingly no reason.”

\--

Alright, so Hershel hadn’t expected to pop out in a dark corridor in an abandoned apartment building. Or maybe he did. But there was a jump pad there and he had absolutely no idea why.

He was wandering through a corridor, noticing each door seemingly had been systematically kicked down. The air smelled musty and the lights were all dimmed and flickering - perhaps the power grid was not supposed to run a gigantic dimensional jump machine. But Hershel had noticed something -

The recall device was showing him he was in the same dimension, he hadn’t moved or anything. So he had decided the device could teleport across a local dimension as well as across multiple dimensions… But who had set up this network? Many things to ponder.

Hershel had taken off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt, deciding it was stupid to wear them indoors. The building was silent, regardless.

Nothing in here. Each room had seemingly been stripped, everything from kettles to beds to the literal taps all having been lifted out. It was empty. Why would anyone leave a dimension hopping pad here, now?

And then he heard a noise. Like thunder. A rip through the air. His head whipped around as he saw-- the jump pad at the other end of the corridor was  _ active and someone had come through it. _

Hershel made the quick decision to dart into a room and hide - the room he’d darted into had a bare bed frame and some torn fabric. Good enough. And so he tried to hide under it, just praying whoever had entered wouldn’t find him or bother to check underneath the bed. Who knows who it could be?

He heard slow footsteps through the corridor and halted his breathing, feeling his heartbeat in his ears somehow louder than the actual footsteps.

“Hey. I can see whoever’s in here used the dimension jump pad, and I just wanna say, I don’t know who you are, but I don’t have a kill warrant on you.” A familiar sounding voice spoke up. “But just letting you know if you keep jumping around the network I might get one and you should be careful.”

Hershel remained silent. Kill warrant?

“Alright, seeya, whoever you are. Go home and you’ll be alright.”

Footsteps and a minute later, the electrical thunder of the jump pad.

...Who?

Hershel rolled out from under the bed once he was sure the person was gone, exhaling in relief. He should have probably considered situations like this before he decided to go dimension jumping - his eyes went to the large recall device on his forearm and pondered for a moment.

…

Curiosity killed the cat but he  _ had  _ to figure out what was going on here.

Hershel decided to grab a rotting board from the bedframe, getting up and heading to the jump pad control panel - which was awkwardly in a side room due to the thin corridor. He found a small history function and decided - why not pursue whoever found him? If he wanted to try the other coordinates he… might as well talk to whoever’s seemingly overseeing the network. Get a pass to use it? Or at least take him down or subdue him?

He’d managed to worm his way out of dangerous situations plenty of times. And if things got particularly hairy…

Hershel primed the recall device to activate at a button’s press as he enabled the jump pad again. Now to see what was happening here.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Hershel and Dante return to Dante's dimension. Hershel tests the coordinates on the dimension jumping pad only to find it can jump locally within the dimension, but is interrupted and startled by someone who would seemingly have no qualms about killing him.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Very direct discussion of Hershel's sexuality/paraphilias, stabbing

Spinning, spinning, spinning, grounded. Hershel stumbled out of the pad’s prongs and forcefield - still in the same dimension, but it turns out priming a dimension recall device while using the full pad had caused some jolts of energy from the device to escape and give him a couple of small shocks. The board he’d been clutching just fell to the ground uselessly.

He collapsed to the floor outside the small pad, feeling old tough carpet. It was stained and dirty. Jesus. He coughed, feeling a stinging through his body from those harsh shocks until he felt a hand on the back of his collar, whipping him to his feet. As his vision focused he saw a serrated blade being pointed at his neck - black jacket, black pants, belt, sc-

The blade was suddenly dropped to the side, Hershel’s sunglasses being yanked off as he met some familiar eyes. Hershel choked in sudden surprise.

“Hershel!” Brown wide eyes and red slicked back hair, still wearing that signature ascot scarf tied around his mouth much like a surgical mask. 

“R-Randall?” Hershel’s eyes widened.

“Oh my god! I FOUND you!” Randall grabbed his hands, pulling his scarf down to reveal a huge grin. “People have been LOOKING for you all over!”

“I’m-- I’m sorry?” Hershel was still reeling from the fact he was staring directly at _Randall Ascot in prison for life for 8 counts of homicide._

“I didn’t know WHERE you went, but you’re back and I can send a message to the b-”

Hershel raised his finger. “Randall- Randall. Please wait a moment.”

“Hmm?” Randall leaned close. Hershel leaned away in turn.

“I’m… not the Hershel Layton from _this_ dimension.” Hershel broke the news. “If that’s what you were thinking.”

Randall blinked for a moment before exhaling. “Never mind, then. Sorry. Regardless, it’s nice to see a Hershel.”

“You were in that corridor, weren’t you? Could I ask about-” 

“Oh, Hershel.” Randall smiled, tenting his fingers. “Seeing as you’re here, could we have a chit-chat? Like old times? I could make you your old favourite tea. We can take a seat.”

It was only now that Hershel noticed the room he was in. A small run down kitchen, a living room, a table with two chairs… A flat of sorts. It was pretty dirty and uncleaned, but that was kind of a given from what he’d seen of this dimension. He also noticed a couple of dolls and various toys on the floor, but honestly? He didn’t need to ask.

“That would be nice, thank you, Randall.” Hershel decided to accept, nodding. He decided to ignore a couch that looked like it was collapsing and went to go sit at the table instead, basically just two folding chairs and a wooden table. Randall went to the tap and opened the kettle, filling it with tap water and putting it on the stove.

“So, what brings you here to this dimension?” Randall asked with a faint smile.

“Well…” Hershel’s eyes went to the blade which Randall had just left on the floor near a literal pile of dolls, thinking back to that night in the alleyway. “There was a stabbing in an alleyway of a man named Lyall who came from this dimension, who was somehow in my own dimension.”

“Ooh, tell me more.”

“It was seemingly pointless, with no motive. Lyall wasn’t robbed or anything, it was just pointless… bloodshed.” Hershel recounted. “I managed to stop the assai-”

“Oh my God.” Randall raised a finger, waving it for a second. “Was the assailant scared off by someone waving an umbrella threateningly?”

Hershel’s eyes flicked up to Randall with a look of mild annoyance, to put it simply.

“Did the assailant run off after pointing his knife at the person intervening?” Randall had a slow grin coming to his face.

“Did you assault an innocent man in an alleyway for no reason?” Hershel looked up, a pained expression on his face. He should’ve expected this. _Randall Ascot, imprisoned for life under charges for 8 homicides._

“Oh no, I’ve been caught.” Randall raised his hands in mock defeat. “Yes, so I assaulted a man-”

Hershel actually sighed, burying his face in his hands. “Did you have a motive?”

“Not particularly, but I just saw some people were using the dimension jump pad that was stolen from the mountains to jump to the closest dimension, and-”

“So you thought the best way to deal with this problem was to _stab them_?” Hershel looked up from his hands.

“Looking back, probably wasn’t the best way to deal with it.” Randall took the kettle off the stove just as it finished boiling, pouring some boiling water into a mug with a teabag. “I don’t have milk, sorry.” 

Hershel looked up from his tea, deciding to wait a bit before drinking it. He was silent, staring.

“Are you going to start hand wringing over me stabbing people?” Randall tutted. “Says y-”

“Alright, next topic.” Hershel interrupted Randall. “From what I’ve heard from the Luke of this dimension, he believes that an alternate version of me is ruling the country.”

“Where’d he hear that?” Randall raised an eyebrow. “He’s been missing for ages with most of the Lost People.”

“The Lost People?” Hershel raised an eyebrow until a door opened, and someone came bolting in.

Long honey brown curls, big blue eyes, a red dress - a small child around 8 years old. She was short, but she seemed to pause as she spotted the professor, blinking.

“This is Katrielle.” Randall introduced with a small smile. “She, ah, appeared when the Lost People all disappeared and some people then appeared from them-”

“I was going to ask what’s for dinner.” Katrielle asked, looking over to Randall.

“I’ll probably order a pizza.” Randall nodded, looking to Hershel.

“I’m not sure if an assassin should be taking care of a 9 year old.” Hershel sipped his tea quietly.

“Randall’s a nice guy, I mean…” Katrielle spoke up, her eyes still fixed on Hershel. He didn’t like it.

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s a good idea, either, what, would you rather take care of her?” Randall gave Hershel a smirk. “Is Luke Triton getting too old for you now?”

“Absolutely not.” Hershel somewhat aggressively put his mug down. “I don’t think either of us should be caring for her.”

“What’s your name, mister?” Katrielle suddenly spoke up, blinking. 

“Ah, my name is Professor Hershel Layton.” Hershel took a moment to introduce himself, nodding his head, suddenly wishing he wasn’t having this argument in front of the poor kid.

Katrielle’s eyes widened. “...F… Father?”

“I had children in another dimension?” Hershel suddenly realized, immediately burying his face in his hands in shame.

\--

Luke had enough of little needles being poked into his arm, but he’d gotten a blood test and his results would be coming in a couple of days. He sat watching Dante pace back and forth in the small cramped living room.

“Are you feeling alright?” Luke watched as Dante paced back and forth.

“I thought the police would know where my version of the professor is.” Dante whispered, his hands shaking. “I-- I assumed he had taken control of them, but-”

“What was the last letter you received from Hershel?” Luke asked, feeling Dante’s distress affecting him as well.

“I…” Dante held his head in his hands. “It was just something about a cafe! And a muffin…”

“What made you assume he’d taken control of the police and fulfilled the whole Future London thing, then?” Luke was trying to figure out the poor man’s mindset.

\--

Luke Triton sat in front of the TV, choking on his own tears. He was 17 years old, but he was crying like a _fucking child._ His father was out working late but his mother was there to sit with him, a hand on his shoulder.

_VARIOUS LANDMARKS AROUND LONDON EVAPORATED_

_UNIDENTIFIABLE PEOPLE MATERIALIZING AROUND SITES OF EVAPORATION_

The whole world had stopped to pause and watch this event. So many landmarks evaporated. So many people. Parliament, Buckingham Palace, a couple schools… A prison…

A list of missing names were scrolling down on the news ticker.

“Luke, darling, he’ll be f-”

“No.” Luke croaked. “I can feel it. He’s not okay.”

“You’re just paranoid.” Brenda spoke softly, pulling Luke into a side-hug as he trembled.

And then the name HERSHEL LAYTON slid across the ticker at the bottom, and Luke felt his blood go cold - and he began to wail even harder.

\--

“I feel like we should try and inspect the apartment of your Hershel?” Luke looked up, blinking for a second. “...Assuming it isn’t inhabited.”

“So like what I did here?” Dante chuckled defeatedly. He was trembling, seemingly showing that he hadn’t taken thinking back to that day very well.

“If it’s inhabited we don’t bother.” Luke got to his feet, rubbing his head and rolling his sleeve back down to cover the little plaster on his arm. He held his hands out and made a little gesture with his head to the recall device Dante had strapped on his arm.

Dante exhaled as he began to tweak the dials and flicked the machine on, a high pitched whine rising through the air as he took Luke’s hands to recall back home to his home dimension.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Hershel finds the assassin who stabbed Lyall and threatened him is none other than the alternate dimension's version of Randall Ascot, and learns he is raising his child from another dimension, a young girl named Katrielle. Dante hears the government doesn't actually know where his version of Hershel is and makes a decision with Luke to break into his old apartment. 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: More direct discussion of Hershel's sexuality/paraphilias

“This could’ve been us, Hershel!” Randall lightly teased as he walked through the grey empty night streets with Hershel and Katrielle at his side. Randall was trying to show him where he’d found Katrielle, but goddamn if he wasn’t going to be an irritating bastard while they went there. “You and me, we probably wouldn’t have a kid since you’re a ped-”

“I am not interested, and I am painfully aware.” Hershel mumbled, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You’re taking me to where you found Katrielle.”

“I was… 2, right?” Katrielle looked up to Randall.

“I think, at least.” Randall tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Wow, 6 years goes fast.”

And then they came to the site. Literally just an empty slot of land in between all the buildings, having seemingly been lifted from existence. Dirt, that’s it.

“Do you know what was here beforehand?” The professor pondered aloud.

“I just broke out of prison when it got evaporated, really.” Randall shrugged. “But I found a tiny vibrating kid wandering around and decided to take her home to take care of her.”

“And not to get an easy victim?” Hershel’s eyes shot over to Randall.

“Easy victim?” Katrielle lightly gasped, covering her mouth in shock.

“You keep being accusatory and everything but don’t forget-” Randall raised a finger. “You’re just as much of a monster as I am.”

“I haven’t killed anyone.” Hershel argued, before exhaling and rummaging in his pocket for a sheet of paper. He pulled it out to read it.

“What’s on that paper?” Randall leaned in close.

“Coordinates for your dimension hopping machine.” Hershel murmured. “I’m going to try all of these and-”

Randall suddenly snatched the paper from his hands. “Give me that, I know the machine better than you do.” His eyes went over it as Katrielle stood on her tippy toes to try and read it too.

Hershel reached to take it back but exhaled. Randall was just like that. 

“I was planning to jump between them and test out the local coordinates before I go to the longer ones.” Hershel explained… 

Randall carefully studied them with a furrowed brow. “If there’s nothing interesting you can see about this site… could I try some of these coordinates?”

Hershel blinked. “You go through the network, don’t you? Do you not have all the coordinates on hand?”

“No, not all of these.” Randall squinted behind his glasses...

\--

Dante felt a familiar churning in his stomach as he approached the apartment of his own Hershel Layton. He hadn’t bothered coming here in years after hearing the man was missing, and, he didn’t have a key to get in. Thankfully, the other Luke by his side did in fact have a key.

“Do you think anyone’s… been here since Hershel’s disappearance?” Luke asked, slotting the key into the lock - quietly relieved that it actually fit…

“I don’t think so, no one really decided to repossess any of the houses or possessions of the people who… went missing.” Dante commented as Luke unlocked the door with a click and slowly pushed it open.

Dante inhaled for a moment as the door was fully pushed open, revealing the untouched but dusty flat. Luke gave a little gesture indicating he should go in first.

And so Dante stepped inside the dark apartment, feeling his boots press into the dusty old carpet. He reached for the lightswitch to click it on, remembering this district hadn’t had power restored. Indeed, the lights did not flick on. The apartment at dusk was always a bit dark, but he could tell from the layout that nothing had really changed from his childhood.

“Oh, I remember when the couch was still over there.” Luke commented as he looked over at an untouched dusty couch. “Me and Hershel moved it once we got a TV.”

Dante decided to pull a small flashlight from his pocket which he kept on him next to his notebook - and shone it across the room. Mess everywhere. Books laying open, empty teacups, old newspapers, a pillow on the couch for some reason? Mm.

“Is there anything you want to look for?” Luke asked until Dante shushed him.

“I’ll look myself.” Dante mumbled and decided to head towards the study.

He pushed the door open slowly, wrinkling his nose. It smelled musty in here… The professor’s study was a bit tidier than outside, a couple of stray artifacts on a small table and the like, but books still lay everywhere on the floor.

His eyes were caught by a glint on the old desk, shining his light to see a closed envelope with the professor’s signature red wax seal pressed onto it.

A letter he’d written and hadn’t sent.

_It couldn’t be._

Dante immediately lunged for it, tearing the envelope open and yanking out the contents-- three pages, all handwritten in cursive as all his letters were --

_Dearest Luke Triton_

Dante’s eyes immediately began to run down the page, grasping the torch in one hand and the letter in the other.

_Firstly, before I start this letter I would like to tell you about a bird I saw. It had beautiful plumage and I fed it a couple of breadcrumbs and thought about the birds you talk to. Do you ever see particularly beautiful birds over in New York? I’d love to hear about what Sydney is doing._

_On a more important note, I have been given governmental approval and access to the time machine Claire had been working on. You already know I’ve been trying to get access for years to try and find closure by figuring out what went wrong - but I think it may be worth experimenting with. The machine had a component which allowed for travel between dimensional frequencies as well as across the ‘residing frequency’. I will try to experiment with this and I may be able to visit you if I can figure out how the machine works._

_Seeking closure about Claire’s passing is something I need to do eventually. I miss her dearly but I have realized I am almost actively avoiding moving on, and that just isn’t fair on you. I don’t want you to feel like a second option._

_If you receive this letter before I arrive, please feel free to book or plan something for us to do while I’m visiting. I cannot wait to see you again._

_I love you._

_Yours truly,_

_Professor Hershel Layton_

Dante read that last sentence over and over again, beginning to tremble.

_I love you_

He folded it and decided to tuck it in his jacket pocket, exhaling. This must’ve been written… before he went… missing, while… fiddling with the dimensional settings on a… time machine that… had a tendency to blow up.

Man must’ve had a death wish.

“Did you find something?” The voice of the other Luke came from behind Dante, making him jump in surprise.

Dante spun around, teary eyed grasping the pages in his shaking hands. “I found these.”

“Wh-”

“A letter-- a letter that the professor didn’t send.” Dante trembled, clearly trying to hold in his tears. “The bastard tried to use the time machine to visit me.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Randall Ascot finds he did not have all the coordinates for the dimension hopping machine at his disposal. Dante finds a letter from his version of the professor that was never sent - revealing he used the old time travel machine to try and move himself spatially as a sort of last resort, causing many chunks of London to be evaporated as well as bringing several people in from other dimensions and throwing others to other dimensions.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Animal attacks, survival shit

“There’s three people inbound on the pad.” A woman peered down at a small command line screen embedded into the dashboard. “All stabilized. Did we send some people out or is this a breach?”

“I think it’s a breach.” 

The woman pushed her glasses up her nose and leaned over the dashboard. She had set up this facility a couple of years back to try and help the Lost People return home, with varying degrees of success. She’d even managed to get her crew to fish a couple of lost people who got stuck in other dimensions to return back home. Of course, it was far and few between who actually managed to cooperate to get their family members or friends back, but that was life. 

Setting up a network of the pads across the country for quick travel and quick inspection of sites had proven to be beneficial, and only within the past few months had she managed to start the whole rescuing process. Thank goodness she had that theoretical physics degree.

A couple of her men had pointed their guns at the pad awaiting whatever it was to come out, fearing some horrible monster. She’d stuck a pad in another dimension as an experiment last month only to find horrific monsters coming through on the regular, but the three people coming through seemed normal.

“Put your guns down. They’re coming from within the dimension.” The woman commanded until the three figures flickered onto the pad. A young girl around the age of 10, a lanky redhead man wearing black - oh, that’s Randall, useful guy - and-- a familiar looking man in sunglasses.

Immediately, Randall bounded off the pad, skidding across the floor. “You’re my boss?! It just hit me that I never met my boss…”

“I was wondering why anyone would respond to a classified newspaper ad asking for someone who could take orders and had murderous tendencies.” The woman admitted quietly… Her eyes went to the little girl who had seemingly gravitated to his side. Ah yes, the kid he was taking care of and eventually would need to be sent back home when her home dimension was located.

“Did you find a way to send the kid home yet?” Randall asked, but the woman’s eyes went to the man who had stepped off the pad, taking his glasses off and looking up at her rather confused.

The woman lightly gasped. “Professor?”

“Flora Reinhold, all grown up.” Hershel decided to hook the glasses on his pocket. “Are you behind all this, then? The disappearances?”

“Well…” Flora tented her fingers, walking down from the dashboard to try and actually talk to them on equal footing. She was wearing an open lab coat and a pale pink top along with some jeans, closed shoes, casual lab attire. “I suppose I’m trying to fix things. After the whole vaporization and disappearances…”

“I still don’t know what caused that.” Randall spoke aloud… “Somehow vaporizing the entire government and several landmarks and all that in the blink of an eye…”

“It seems like some kind of… dimensional disturbance, but I still don’t know who or what caused it.” Flora murmured until the dashboard began to beep once again. Her eyes flicked up as one of her assistants rushed to the pad.

“Two more people inbound.” A male voice shouted. “Stabilized.”

Flora watched her men proceed to raise their guns again--

“No, put the guns down! Stop being so trigger happy, I took the pad out of that one dimension.” Flora stomped her foot and watched as two more people emerged from the machine.

Two basically identical men, same height, similar outfits, exact same faces. Only difference is one had bleached blond hair with pink tips and a black hat while the other had caramel brown hair with a matching blue hat.

“Ah, I suppose both Lukes found there way here too.” Hershel smiled as his own Luke dusted himself off. Dante seemed a bit more used to it, looking around the room.

“I didn’t expect to see… everyone.” Dante was a bit… surprised, to say the least.

Flora blinked, staring at the two familiar looking men side by side. The one in the blue fedora and blue coat-- caramel brown hair, familiar eyes- that was Luke Triton.

“Luke-!” Flora immediately dashed forwards, finding she was a… lot taller than him. The blond man could wait. She grabbed his collar, standing on her toes in joy. “Finally! I’ve needed you to help fix this-!”

“I-” Luke was surprised, pushing her off but smiled, happy to see her. “You’re looking for the other Luke there.”

Dante raised his hand, catching Flora’s attention. Flora stared in silence for a moment, clearly going over his face. Eyes? Check. Hair? Same style, just… bleached. Outfit-- oh my god.

“You’re the Luke from- this dimension?” Flora turned her attention to Dante, who awkwardly smiled.

“I am.” He nodded. Flora’s eyes immediately lit up.

Flora was quick to grab him by the wrist and start pulling him to the stairs to the dashboard, Dante letting himself being dragged along. Luke decided to move over to Hershel to pick the sunglasses off his shirt to wonder just why he was wearing them, lightly flicking his cheek. Randall was busy inspecting the pad and pointing things out to little Katrielle.

Dante peered down to the dashboard as Flora’s fingers flew across the keyboard.

“I’ve been looking for ways to bring back people to this dimension who were displaced during that… vaporization thing.” She explained. “And I only just now managed to get that modified time machine working to step… left and right, rather than backwards.” 

“So why do you need me?” Dante murmured.

“Because… to bring someone back, you need the person who was closest to them.” Flora explained. “And… well, I’ve been looking for you to see if we could get the professor back. I owe a lot to him.”

And Dante noticed Hershel standing on his toes down on the lower floor as if trying to listen.

“I mean. Without him I wouldn’t have gotten my degree on high level theoretical physics.” Flora rambled. “I’d probably be a housewife or something. Imagine that.” She giggled…

Dante could see Hershel with a faint smile as he quietly talked to Luke down on the lower floor. Things were okay.

“Anyway, anyway, input the first coordinates you can think of.” Flora stepped away from the keyboard.

“The-?” Dante was now standing in front of the keyboard, staring down at the keys. 

“Type what your heart tells you.” Flora nodded for a second. “And it’ll take you to wherever the professor is.”

“I- That works?” Dante looked back, his brow furrowed.

“Apparently.”

And he looked down at the keyboard and inhaled. Would this work? Perhaps. He hoped. Flora was waiting for him.

So he began to key in random numbers until the input textbox was full. And he clicked enter. A datasheet appeared on the screen, to which Flora moved forward to inspect.

“Mmm… Breathable air, edible fruit, higher gravity than usual… Not many predators…” Flora interpreted the data on the screen. “I think we found our dimension.”

Dante lifted his arm to look at the recall device. “So…”

“You want Hershel back, don’t you? Now’s your chance.” Flora spoke with a soft smile. “I can fire up the device and you can just… go find him.” And she pressed a button on the dashboard, immediately firing up the jump pad.

Randall snatched little Katrielle away from the suddenly fired up pad in surprise. And Dante began to slowly walk down, slotting a stabilizer canister into the recall device to activate once he got there.

“Luke--” Flora interrupted Dante as he was about to walk in. And both Lukes in the room looked up at Flora. “You should be able to find the professor with the recall device, it should detect atomic anomalies, but keep in mind you might… find his body.”

Dante looked back into the pad, exhaling. As far as he knew earlier today the professor was dead, but… Perhaps if he found his corpse it wouldn’t hurt too much.

\--

And so Dante found himself staring out at a billion stars. An exposed atmosphere, light from the twin moons cleaving through the thin clouds of haze. He inhaled the fresh air, finding it tasted somewhat minty. Wind rustled the dark navy coloured grass, an endless plain with a couple of trees and rocky outcroppings spread out before him.

Dante could feel himself vibrating against the ground, deciding to activate the stabilization canister in the recall device. He exhaled shakily as the constant vibration subsided, being able to feel his boots now firmly planted in the dirt.

There was a tingling in his mind and on his fingertips. Dante made a slow turn to the right, feeling that tingle somehow pulling him in that direction.

Come to think of it, when he entered the dimension of that other Luke he felt a constant tingle towards the direction where Lyall was. Perhaps…

And so Dante began his walk. This way, this way.

The minty air kept him going forwards, but he had so many thoughts beginning to run through his head.

How long would he have to walk? How far away is the professor?

Could he even survive out here? The professor had many surprising skill sets he could pull out of nowhere, most notably the fact he could sword fight  _ anyone _ and win. Even if he didn’t have a blade- he’d seen the man win with a bit of rebar.

Good times. Dante faintly smiled.

As he inhaled the minty air, he did notice that he did feel… heavier. His feet seemed to be harder to lift. Something felt like it was  _ pushing  _ him down. Higher gravity?

Perhaps that was why it was so tiring to walk… The night air-

Something in his shoulder. Blood. Something coming out of his shoulder-- something had stabbed him. Thick iron. 

Dante tried to pull himself off, spinning around and realizing he’d come unarmed- finding himself faced with some horrific creature. He couldn’t make out eyes, but he saw elephant-like skin and a piercing tongue which had gone through his shoulder-

_ He felt awful burning.  _ Dante briefly wished he had a weapon-- a baseball bat or something, his karate wouldn’t help him h-

And then something else hit him on the back of the head, and he hit the ground.

\--

…

What’s my name?

My name’s Luke. L...Luke Triton. Age 23, and the sun is shining in my eyes and there’s someone looking over me. My blond hair is in my eyes. Are those two suns? I can’t see and my shoulder hurts.

I feel heavy.

“Is it y-you?” A voice over me.

Who’s talking? My head hurts. I rub my eyes, still feeling that persistent burn in my shoulder. Why am I here again? I’m looking for Professor Hershel Layton of my dimension after another Luke Triton and his Hershel Layton helped me out. And- I was asked a question. It was a vague question.

“Luke?”

That’s my name.

And my vision focuses and I look up to see a familiar face.

He’s disheveled. He looks exhausted - more so than I ever saw him, he’s got stubble and an exhausted look in his eyes, his hair is unwashed and greasy but oh my god

Luke sat up, against a rock. The professor’s hat was still on his head, tattered as it was. His coat was missing and his orange shirt stained with old blood and- 

“Professor.”

He takes a slow seat on the ground. His eyes are… recognizable, but he looks so different. He’s reeling. And… he appears to be shaking to the eye, vibrating. Professor Hershel Layton, a husk of a man trapped in another dimension he was clearly not acclimated to. He was silent.

Luke inhaled, exhaled. “I’ve… I’ve come to rescue you.” He held out his arm with the recall device, somehow still intact and with the empty stabilization canister slotted in.

“There’s a way home?” Hershel’s eyes… lit up.

“There is, professor. And we-- we probably won’t be able to go back to London, b-but-- there’s a way home.” Luke tapped some of the buttons and turned a knob. “D...did you miss me?”

And Hershel managed a weak smile. “I-- I missed you so much.” He croaked. “So so much.”

\--

When Dante re-emerged from the dimension pad, the lights had been dimmed. The room had emptied apart from Flora who had fallen asleep on an old couch on the side of the room, and Luke with a book, sitting awkwardly and uncomfortably on the couch, completely unbothered by his weird way of sitting. And… the professor on his arm.

The professor quickly took a single step out of the teleport pad, immediately collapsing on the ground, his hat rolling onto the ground. He gave a cry of shock - and Flora sat bolt upright - having immediately woken from her sleep, and the other Luke on the couch gasping in surprise.

He pushed himself up onto his knees, rubbing his sore head, Luke kneeling by his side and holding one of his hands. “Gravity’s lighter back here, professor-”

“Please.” The professor looked over at him, his voice hoarse but a weak smile having formed on his face. “Call me… Hershel. It’s- it’s strange for you to keep calling me professor.”

“Is it?” Luke blinked, remembering other Luke had been requested the same thing.

“I sincerely doubt I still have my job as a professor, love.” Hershel blinked, letting Luke pull him to his feet again.

Flora proceeded to rush over with bandages in hand. “Professor-!” She then paused, seeing the man unharmed, if a bit… shaken up. Ruined clothes and all.

“Flora?” Hershel’s eyes went over to her, lab coat and all, spectacles as well. She had certainly grown up and become a young woman to be proud of. 

“I’m- I’m so glad you’re okay.” Flora exhaled in relief, as if the stress of several years had lifted off her. “And, well. You’re back, but you're aware you probably won’t be able to stay in England anymore, aren’t you?”

“Did something happen while I was away?” Hershel raised an eyebrow.

“Your fiddling with the time machine evaporated a good portion of city and government.” Luke spoke bluntly, still holding his hand tight. “So, um, people want to arrest you and we need to go somewhere, and we need a 

Hershel blinked.

“I suppose we’ll have to figure out a place to go.” He commented.

“I already know a place and a name for you.” Luke assured him- until Flora suddenly grabbed Hershel’s free hand.

“Ah? You do?”

“I was thinking we could go somewhere to rural France and you could go by, uh, ‘Basil Herb’, or something.” Luke scratched his head.

“France? That’s perfect. And I always thought I looked a bit like a ‘Basil’...” 


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Flora has been running an operation modifying the old time machine to be stable as well as being able to cross dimensions and large expanses of land, partially in an attempt to get the Lost People home as well as bringing Hershel home. Dante manages to rescue Hershel from the alternate dimension and all is well.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Tooth rotting fluff

Lyall had gotten the stitches out of his neck the previous night, and although he was still in the hospital, he was sure he would be allowed out soon.

The London outside the window was unfamiliar. The sky was a sunset orange and the skyline was unmistakably different, busier than anything he’d seen back home. What was this dimension… like? Was it too different? He did find himself worrying about poor Dante though. Was he also attacked? God, he hoped not. This stupid mission to test the dimension jumping pad hadn’t gone well.

And then the door opened, a familiar figure strolling in.

A short man wearing a high collared coat and an orange shirt, holding a recall device in his hands.

“Lyall, sir.” The man nodded slowly.

“Mr. Layton.” Lyall blinked, holding his vibrating arm out as the man took his arm to slide the recall device on.

“I thought you could use this.” Mr. Layton smiled warmly. “How are your stitches healing up?”

“They’ve just been taken out.” Lyall assured. “Is this a device to send me home?”

“It is.” Mr. Layton confirmed, patting the device. “Are you ready to head back? You’ve been discharged, I hear.”

“I have? Thank you.” Lyall exhaled thankfully. “And yes, I’m ready to head back.”

“I also managed to find your assailant.” Mr. Layton spoke darkly. “I had a talk with him.”

“Did you take care of him?”

“The best I could.” Mr. Layton nodded, adjusting a couple of dials on the machine and flicking it on. “Do give your regards to your friends.”

And there was a whine as the machine began to account for his atomic structure to send him back home to the nearest dimension. Hershel watched as the man simply disappeared before his eyes, reaching to cover his ears to block out the unmistakable crackling of air as he disappeared.

So that was taken care of. His eyes went to the window, recognizing by the way the sunset light entered the room it was probably around… 5:21pm. Puzzle intuition, you see.

He had something to give Luke once he got home.

\--

Luke opened the letter in his trembling hands. Blood test results. He pulled the letter from the envelope, his chest tight. And…

_ HIV NEGATIVE _

He exhaled in sheer relief, a smile coming to his face as he went to sit on the couch. Thank God. Thank God. He put a hand over his face, thanking every deity he could think of and then that alternate dimension Chelmey for sterilizing his needles. He hadn’t felt… so thankful in a long long time.

Perhaps he and Hershel should do something to celebrate, he thought. That was one hell of a case, something they probably couldn’t speak a word about anyway. He could take a couple more days off to recover, perhaps?

Ah well. Luke thought he should start cooking dinner - when immediately as that thought came, the door opened.

Hershel stood there with a bag and some kind of cardboard box, pushing the door open with his shoulder and grunting a bit as he did so. Luke hurried over to take that bag, feeling it heavy. It was food.

“Good evening, Luke.” Hershel gave a slow nod to greet him.

“I was thinking I should cook dinner tonight, but…” Luke placed the bag down on the kitchen bench, carefully unrolling the top to see it contained something wrapped in a newspaper. “What’s this?”

“Randall… recommended me a place.” Hershel explained as he set the cardboard box down. “He said they sold vegetarian burgers, and that seemed exactly like what you’ve been looking for.”

“Oh my god, you’re right.” Luke’s eyes lit up immediately, pulling a styrofoam clamshell from the bag. 

But Hershel took the cardboard box and held it out to Luke. “Please, open this before we start eating.”

Luke set the burger down to take the box, flicking a tab open and slowly opening it to see… His eyes widened. A beautiful beautiful carved violin, shining with polish. “I. I don’t know what to say…”

“Well, you play so well and seeing as your old one was broken…” Hershel spoke softly.

“You’re certainly a man of surprises tonight.” Luke closed the box, deciding to carry it over to the sofa to attend to later.

“I arranged a trip up to Manchester so we could visit our Flora next weekend.” Hershel confirmed he was indeed a man of surprises. “See how she’s doing as a student nurse.”   
  
“Oh, even better.” Luke pressed his hands together with a smile.

And shortly they were sat at the table, Luke essentially scarfing down his meal like he always did. But Hershel noticed there was a look of sheer delight on his face - like, like, this was the place. They’d found it. A place that did decent takeout. Finally. 

“Randall did worry me back there.” Hershel murmured as he took a sip of some iced water.

Luke licked a bit of the sauce from his lips, making a noise of acknowledgement.

“An assassin… I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m not sure about that child he was looking after…” Hershel commented, staring down into the glass.

“The one with the red dress?” Luke asked, just checking.

“Apparently she’s my daughter from another dimension.” Hershel bit his lip. “I hope she stays safe.”

“From, ah, you or Randall?” Luke felt an awkward cringe coming to his face.

“Either.”

“Actually, what’re the chances that we were raising her together though, as a family?” 

That thought did bring a small smile to Hershel’s face, sipping his water. “We can only hope so.”

“And… do you think we’ll ever see Dante again?”

“He was a nice man. We can only hope so, yet again…”

\--

Luke shut his eyes. The sun was shining and lighting up his blond fringe, the wind tussling it as he leaned out the window. The breeze was shifting the warm air and he slumped down over the windowsill, feeling nothing but relaxation.

The air was fresh and crisp. A late summer afternoon. Dante Inferno, recent immigrant to this small French village with his ‘brother’ Basil Herb. Of course, inside the house, he was still very much Luke Triton and his partner was still very much Hershel Layton, still in recovery from having been trapped in another dimension for so long, but  _ recovering.  _

It was Saturday. Luke had managed to find a job at a bakery and Hershel had managed to find a job organizing books at a library by pile, despite the fact neither of them spoke French, they’d managed to pick up some small phrases already. Today was their day off for the week, and they’d decided to just spend it at home to acclimate to their surroundings.

Hershel placed down a tray of tea, taking a seat on an old floral patterned couch. And he sat down, exhaling as he went to pour himself something.

Luke sniffed the air and turned back to see Hershel sipping from a little china teacup, seemingly appreciating the scent and taste. How long had it been since he’d actually had a nice cup of tea? He was still struggling to acclimate to the lighter gravity, so that tea must be a lovely comfort.

He went to sit down next to him, taking the teapot to pour himself some tea. 

“Did you find that French to English dictionary yet?” Hershel asked as he glanced over to Luke, noticing the pink tips of his hair had somewhat come out over the past few days.

“Nothing yet.” Luke admitted, putting a splash of milk in his teacup, followed by a lump of sugar. “I did learn a useful phrase, though.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

And Luke leaned over slowly, a smile coming to his face. “ _ Je t’aime. _ ”

“Well then, I suppose I’ve learned quite a useful phrase too.” Hershel met his gaze with a amatching smile. “ _ Je t’aime aussi. _ ”

Luke laughed to himself, cupping his cheek for a moment as he felt the tips of his ears growing hot. “Oh, you.”

“I’m curious, though.” Hershel began. “Just how did you know I’d like to end up in… France, if I had to leave England?”

“Shall I start from the beginning?” Luke plucked a biscuit from the tray.

“Take all the time you need, love.” 

**FIN**


	17. Author's Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Thank you for reading. This is just an addendum so I can talk about the writing process and the like. Please don't forget to leave a comment or a Kudos if you enjoyed the fanfic!

Hello! I just wanted to talk about why I wrote this.

So the first reason was I just felt like it - I got punched in the face with a Layton phase and got mad about Unwound Future again and decided to try a rewrite? It of course didn't turn out like that and now here we are. I doubt I'll try an Unwound Future rewrite now that I've seen the anime the impact of the game seems to have lessened significantly so my anger has dimmed.

I started writing this in around late September and actually did put a beta version of the fic up on another account, but I took it down for a couple of reasons partially due to anxiety and partially due to wanting to refine the start (which did turn out great)

One goal I wanted to have in mind here was to write something internally consistent and leave no loose threads? I think I achieved that

The musical integration was a relatively last minute thing, but I'm glad I did it. Since you read this author's note here, take this stupid meme arrangement of Driftveil City I made while fucking around on SynthFont ripping Curious Village tracks

Thank you for reading!


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